Celebrities in Haiti and depiction of their
relief efforts in media
Erika Konovalova
Communication for Development
One-year master
15 Credits
May 2016
Supervisor: Tobias Denskus
ABSTRACT
In the last decade, celebrities’ philanthropic activism has emerged into the global
phenomena. In order to raise the awareness about the global problems and suffering of
others, as well as increase public funding of humanitarian organizations, celebrity
figures are becoming ever more representative for the humanitarianism issues between
the global North and South. Whereas celebrity interventions were previously considered
to be important for media studies only, growing body of academic research admits it
significance for the international development studies and global issues of
communication. Through analysis of the most prominent researchers in the field of
celebritized involvement in the global development, as well as independent discourse
and semiotic analysis, this thesis proves the emergence of celebrities as new global
actors of the development. The main objective of this paper is to both evaluate and
debate on how celebritized humanitarians are depicted in the media in comparison to
Haitians in immediate aftermath of earthquake in 2010. The results show that despite
good intentions, the analysis shows that the images, which are being manifested by the
celebrities within the North-South relations, are heavily criticized for inhibiting the
development of Haiti and expanding the global inequality. Nevertheless, celebrities are
not acting in own interests only and are suppose to present themselves in accordance to
political forces and societal frames of reality of the global North.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 2
1.
2.
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 4
1.1
Thesis outline ........................................................................................... 5
1.2
Relevance for the Communication for Development studies ................. 6
Celebrities as new actors of humanitarianism ............................................................. 7
2.1
Brief introduction to the concept of humanitarianism ............................ 7
2.2
Change, development and North – South relations .............................. 10
2.3
The term “celebrity” in the development studies .................................. 13
2.4
Celebrity humanitarianism .................................................................... 15
2.5
Understanding the nature of celebrity humanitarianism ....................... 18
3.
Background information ............................................................................................ 23
4.
Methodology.............................................................................................................. 26
2.1
Research method ................................................................................... 26
4.1.1 Semiology .......................................................................................... 28
4.1.2 Discourse analysis ............................................................................. 30
4.2
Research settings ................................................................................... 32
4.2.1 Data selection for cases ..................................................................... 37
4.3 Research limitations ................................................................................. 40
5.
Empirical analysis ..................................................................................................... 42
5.1 Analysis of visual material ....................................................................... 42
5.2 Analysis of textual material ...................................................................... 49
6.
Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 54
Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 56
Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 60
Appendix A: Haiti aid distribution in 2010 and 2011 by project type ........... 60
Appendix B: 10 Main Haiti aid funders by country in 2010 and 2011 .......... 61
Appendix C: Texts for discourse analysis ...................................................... 62
T1: Sean Penn by Rolling Stone ..................................................................... 62
T2: Angelina Jolie by UNHCR ...................................................................... 68
T3: Wyclef Jean by New York Times ............................................................ 70
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1. INTRODUCTION
During the last two decades, charity organizations and humanitarian individuals
have been risking their lives to save others in emergency regions around the world.
Some of these stories have appeared in the media as front-page news praising heroism
of celebrities that are actively involved into humanitarian aid, others received less
attention. Although humanitarianism is not a new phenomenon in the world,
celebritized aid has emerged quite recently and is receiving ever more public attention
and credibility. That is why UN secretaries have already started recruiting Hollywood
and other Western celebrities as Goodwill Ambassadors (Cooper, 2008). As both
worldwide recognized and politically unbounded figures, celebrities are believed to
raise the public awareness better than politicians by committing to “save the world” and
bringing media attention to urgent problems of the developing countries, as well as
stimulating “Western” developed communities to donate. One of the most prominent
researchers in this field, Lisa Ann Richey believes that due to their authority, legitimacy
and influence celebrities are becoming increasingly effective in reaching wider
audiences and even more in having an impact on local and global processes of
governance.
Nonetheless, heavy criticism is being exerted on the issue both among academic
researchers and popular publicists (cf. Dieter & Kumar, 2008; Tsaliki et al, 2011;
Chouliaraki, 2012; Kapoor, 2013; Brockington, 2014; Richey, 2016), parallel to the
growth of beneficial role of celebrity activism. Critics claim that depiction of celebrity
philanthropy in the Western mainstream media portraits corrupt representation of the
Global North and Global South worlds, extremely highlighting rich Hollywood
celebrities on one side and weak suffering victims on the other side. What is even more
important is that celebrities intervene into the discourse of natural development of the
developing countries by imposing “Western” values of consumerism, industrialism and
individualism, which lead to the lack of local sovereignty. Moreover, celebrity
humanitarianism is also considered to represent a giant marketing mechanism that aims
to promote Hollywood celebrities, improve their reputation and raise the value of their
public (brand) image than a change factor of development.
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This thesis researches the problem of mediated narrative of North-South
relations by exploring celebritized humanitarian efforts in post-earthquake Haiti after
2010. On the example of three prominent U.S public figures (i.e. Angelina Jolie - UN
Goodwill Ambassador, actress and film director, Sean Penn - actor and founder of J/P
Haitian Relief Organization and Wyclef Jean– singer with Haitian roots, founder of
Yele Relief Organization), who participated in charity campaigns after Haitian
earthquake in 2010, the underlying power of contemporary humanitarianism to frame
global social reality and influence constructs of global development are going to be
investigated by analyzing words and images of celebrities depicted by the Western
media about their humanitarian actions. It will be debated whether celebrity aid and
fundraising in Haiti were used as tools for either fostering development of the global
Southern developing countries or on the opposite rather for increasing neo-colonial
attitudes discouraging development and leading to further global inequality between the
rich/powerful and poor/miserable. Thus the main research question of the thesis is
following:
RQ: How is celebrities’ humanitarianism depicted in media in comparison
to Haitian population?
In order to answer the research question, both primary and secondary research
methods will be applied. The analysis of the secondary data will provide an overview of
the current research findings in the field of celebrity studies and will identify, whether
academics consider celebrities as new global development actors or not. The second
part of the researcher includes semiotic and discourse analysis of the sample of selected
entertainment visual and textual media sources. The conduction of the individual
empirical research aims to evaluate and prove existing theoretical findings on a real-life
example.
1.1 Thesis outline
This paper is organized as follows: Chapter 2 presents a literature review. The
aim of the literature review is to find theoretical evidence that celebrity studies
significantly contribute to the development studies and issues of global communication.
In order to achieve this goal, firstly, the concepts of humanitarianism, development and
the North-South relations are introduced, defined and discussed in the scope of celebrity
intervention. Secondly, the term of celebrity is defined within the development studies.
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Thirdly, the celebrity and humanitarianism concepts are linked together. Finally, all of
the mentioned concepts are joined into a theoretical framework by analyzing and
providing the key findings of the prominent researchers in the field of celebrity studies.
Chapter 3 gives a brief overview of the history of Haiti. Chapter 4 discusses semiotic
and discourse analysis as methodological tools. The findings from Chapter 2 are then
further used to initiate, compare and discuss the results of the empirical analysis of this
thesis (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 provides a conclusion of both primary and secondary
research.
1.2 Relevance for the Communication for Development studies
In scope of the relevance to communication for development, this thesis aims to
highlight the important challenges of contemporary journalism and media, as well
organisational communication. It is easy to criticise development, yet one should first
embed it as a communicative practice in the 'doing'. The thesis thus tries to explore how
the communicative practice of celebrities depicted through the Western media becomes
a discipline and helps to understand what is currently considered as truthful
representation of the social reality. To understand what truth is, a critical look at the
available informational sources can be helpful. Critical analysis of popular and
academic literature helps to evaluate the reality we are living in and the biased truth we
believe in, which is created and impelled by current forces of truth. Critical thinking
facilitates a creation of own evaluation of reality, although it might be of subjective
nature as well. Yet only due to the ability to think, evaluate and criticize, the human
kind continues to develop and only so can come up with the solutions of global
development problems.
Furthermore, the involvement of celebrities as new actors in presenting or
representing development needs much deeper investigations than simple evaluation of
goodness/badness. It needs to explore the issues of power, privilege or accountability of
its participants. Hence, Communication for Development is ideally suited to critically
engage into the understanding of such issues and complexities.
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2. CELEBRITIES AS NEW ACTORS OF HUMANITARIANISM
2.1 Brief introduction to the concept of humanitarianism
The concept of humanitarianism refers to the constructs of social life and dates
back to the early 19th century. Humanitarianism can be defined in many possible ways,
however generally it is conceived as an altruistic act, which has life-saving intention
under consideration of the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and
independence (Barnett & Weiss, 2008). As claimed by J. Pictet (1979) from the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) the four core principles can be
enhanced by three further ones: voluntary service, unity and universality. The core
principles can be briefly defined as following. Humanity considers all human beings or
people. Neutrality claims that humanitarian actors should take a neutral position in the
conflict, neither supporting nor opposing one of the parties. Impartiality stands for
providing help to causalities regardless of their nationality, gender, age, race, religion or
political position. Independence supposes that humanitarian acts should not be
dependent on any financial or moral assistance from the conflict parties or other actors
that are directly or indirectly interested in the outcome of the issue. (Barnett & Weiss,
2008) According to the definition of Red Cross, the funding of humanitarian agencies
should rather originate from private or non-governmental donors (Pictet, 1979).
These principles are conceived as guidelines for humanitarian organizations,
whose main mission is to offer relief and protection. Organizations or individuals that
follow all of the mentioned principles are thus ideally humanitarian. The further are the
actual intentions from the ideal, the less credible is the act of humanitarianism. In reality
most organizations are incapable of achieving the idealized status of humanitarianism,
hence modern social theory suggests that “the essence of humanitarianism is to save
lives at risk” (Barnett & Weiss, 2008, p. 11).
The plausibility of humanitarianism is easily evident by the relief from natural
disasters, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and similar. This paper focuses on
the act of humanitarianism triggered by the natural disaster, namely the Haitian
earthquake in 2010 (see Chapter 3). Human caused disasters such as wars, genocide and
other conflicts also endanger individuals, societies or even entire nations and
consequently enforce humanitarian involvement as well. Third type of humanitarianism
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does not require any particular natural or human-made disaster as a prerequisite for
offering help for those in need. It aims to improve overall social situation in the world
by improving health care and education systems, reduce poverty and suffering, as well
as eliminate violations of human rights. (ibid.)
The principles of the early humanitarianism were based mainly on providing
relief from war crimes and establishing international practices, which should hold the
societies strongly together (Parmelee, 1915). The break-through of humanitarianism as
a concept of international relations and social studies had appeared in 1864 with the
establishment of Geneva Convention and International Committee of Red Cross
(Richey, 2016). The second period of humanitarianism arouse during the period of the
World Wars, when most of well-known aid organizations appeared including UN,
UNICEF, Caritas, Oxfam etc. As the WWII ended, inequality as a new global issue
resulting from decolonization, war destruction and in turn from the emergence of a
development discourse and requirement of foreign aid, received foremost attention.
Through the Cold War period and till now, the third type of humanitarianism (i.e.
establishing world peace, security and equality) has been prevalent. Moreover, in the
current millennium humanitarianism and counterterrorism are considered as equivalent
by some countries. (Barnett & Weiss, 2008)
Nevertheless, the principles of humanitarianism are subject of an intense debate
by many researchers. Mainly, the principles of neutrality and independence are being
speculated. Critiques (cf. Barnett & Weiss, 2008; Brockington, 2014; Richey, 2016)
argue that humanitarian organizations are not unbiased actors in their deeds anymore.
On the opposite, they represent the interests of the global powerful elite, who intervene
into domestic affairs with the help of humanitarian missions. In addition, interventions
contribute less to the development of the suffering nations, but rather increase the
inequality between the global North and “others”. Political powers also play a
significant role in humanitarian aid as some powers use humanitarian tricks to increase
political or military pressure on the regions of interest (Barnett & Weiss, 2008).
Nonetheless, according to A. de Waal (2009) humanitarian aid is incapable to solve
profound political problems despite the belief of Western governments and donating
people.
However, intervention of political actors in humanitarian aid is not a new
phenomenon either. Acts of charity are long present in all major world religions,
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including Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Although Holy Scriptum proclaims the idea
of charity as a voluntary act of love and compassion, many nations have misused this
idea and have exploited “humanitarian” actions as interventions for military expansion,
colonization or other forms of human rights abuse (Barnett & Weiss, 2008).
The term “humanitarianism” in this paper is hence considered as act of saving
lives at risks (in accordance to Barnett & Weiss, 2008), yet author of this paper does not
find counterterrorism and humanitarianism as equal terms and rather agrees with
critiques (i.e Richey (2016), Brockington (2014)) that humanitarianism is an act of both
desirable and undesirable intervention into the development of the suffering nations.
Therefore, the goal of this paper is to explore and to confirm the hypothesis of
undesirable intervention how Western mainstream media interprets celebrity
humanitarianism as an interference method by powerful “North” with the goal to
weaken the moral and social power of developing nations, also known as “others” or the
“Third World”.
The critiques of the contemporary humanitarianism studies point the attention to
the complexity of humanitarian aid (as described above), at the same time celebrities are
receiving ever more credits for being the new actors in the international relations (see
Chapter 2.3). Hence, the political interests may be artfully covered under the colorful
celebritized wrapping that aims to bring global peace and security. The empirical part of
this paper (Chapter 5) explores the problem in detail.
Finally, the terms “humanitarianism”, “charity” and “philanthropy” can be
generally used (and are used in this paper) as equivalent. According to Kapoor (2013),
the difference between the terms lies within the fact that charity has the religious
descent, while philanthropy is rather secular term, describing corporate interventions. In
addition, Littler (2008) applies the term “do-gooding”, which is defined as generation of
“[…] a lot of hype and PR but is relatively insignificant in relation to international and
governmental policy” (p.240). Richey (2016) suggests that this is a practical definition
of humanitarianism in terms of modern theory. The author of this paper agrees with
Richey (2016) and hence terms “philanthropy”, “do-gooding”, “charity” and
“humanitarianism” are further considered in this paper as the same.
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2.2 Change, development and North – South relations
To understand the principles of celebrity humanitarianism, it is important to see
the underlying factors that foster human motivation to provide or receive aid. In this
scope the significance of development and willingness to change plays a notable role in
shaping world inequality and hence impelling powerful actors to help weaker ones. In
other words, unequal stages of development contribute to the establishment of NorthSouth relations.
The terms North and South are commonly used by scientific and political
discourse to define the nature of relationships between richer, industrialized and
developed countries and poorer, less industrialized and developing countries (Krüger,
2008). Although the majority of developing countries are indeed located in the Southern
Hemisphere, the division between North and South is not geographical but is rather
based on diverse economic, political and social factors. Structures like GDP,
productivity, unemployment, mortality rates, life expectancy and similar generate the
level of country’s development. In addition, political forces that represent the nation on
domestic and international level through diverse institutions, coalitions and reforms add
up to the development ability. Furthermore, historical background of a country also
plays a role in the development. The historical influence in developing countries in the
South is clearly visible through century long colonial relationships with the North in the
past and anti-colonial movements since the end of the WWII. (ibid.)
The rising power of anti-colonial activities, the breakdown of “Old Europe” into
new states and escalation of former colonies during the Cold War conflict led to the
establishment of the development theory as a separate academic discipline. In the
context of the North-South relations, international development is understood as “aid
relationships aiming to combat poverty and/or reduce economic inequality” (Richey,
2016, p.10). The modernization theory of development claims that the nature of change
is universal and linear process, meaning that all countries move through similar
processes from developing to developed stage. Moreover, during the process of social
change developing countries imitate the characteristics of developed countries.
Modernization theory views the North (i.e. Western Europe, US, Australia) as “the
centres of modernity, innovation, industrialization, dynamic entrepreneurship,
achievement, rationality and freedom” (Krüger, 2008, p. 4). At the same time, the South
(i.e. Africa, Asia and Latin America) is characterized by “the prevalence of traditional
10
institutions, undeveloped divisions of labour, the lack of utilization of their own
resources, overpopulation, pre-democratic structures, and the predominance of rites,
rituals, and primitive customs” (ibid.).
Whereas modernization theory usually analyzes the development of the
particular country, dependency theory is used to describe the relations between North
and South that force the development on international scale. Dependency theory
suggests that the underdevelopment of South in comparison to North is indeed created
by the Northern actors who exploit the developing countries in own interests. The
exploitation takes different forms such as international trade mechanisms, use of the
Southern resources by large corporations or creation of financial dependency. The
supporters of dependency theory believe that developing countries should cooperate
with each other to increase the collective self-reliance and contribute to the
development, as well as decrease the dependency from the North. This claim is
absolutely opposite to the modernization theory’s followers, who believe that
cooperation with the North and integration into world markets, institutions and values
will bring positive changes into development. (ibid.) Unification of both theories
highlights the importance of the North-South relations on the global development and
justifies the intervention of the richer into poor’s’ concerns.
Among traditional international development assistance, Richey (2016) names
other forms of modern development methods, including corporate social responsibility
(CSR), consumption-based humanitarianism (i.e. “brand aid”), remittances and
investment. Therefore, humanitarian aid also plays an important role in the North –
South relations and global development trends.
There is a significant number of institutions that constitute to the development of
the global South and that mostly originate from the global North. The main goal of
those institutions is to enhance global awareness of the Southern concerns and generate
funding for their work in the development field. However, global public in general is
weakly attracted to the problems of the developing countries and is not likely to engage
into charity (Cameron & Haanstra, 2008). Hence, humanitarian organizations “brand”
their donors and aid receivers. Cameron & Haanstra (2008) suggest that the best
contemporary method to market development is to make it sexy. The image of the
Northern donor is presented as sexy, sophisticated and successful in order to stimulate
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mainstream publics to admire and follow it, hereby increasing general awareness and
funding for the organizations.
Popular media and political figures are ideal candidates for adding sex appeal to
the development and the North-South relations. Attractive public figures are well –
recognizable both in the North and in the South and have thus higher degree of
influence on the global relations. Smith & Yanacoupulos (2004) believe that celebrities
are new public faces of development that create new global political and economic
power relations. Therefore, celebrities are important component of the discursive
dissimilarity between the global North and South, and are contributing communicators
of global relations and development.
Furthermore, the representation of celebrity humanitarians in mainstream media
incorporates aspects of modernization theory in scope of highlighting the “real”
Northern quality of life, in particular freedom, power, modernization, innovation and
entrepreneurship in contrast to undeveloped Global South. In this sense, media chooses
the “best” from the Northern society as representative images of the North. At the same
time, mediated responses of disasters (here, in particular of Haiti) reflect the
undevelopment of the Global South with its overpopulation, lack of resources, primitive
customs and so on. It often pictures the poorest ones, whose only hope is to receive help
from donors in accordance to dependency theory As Balaji (2011) argues, such contrast
between Global North and South is used by mainstream journalism or modern leaders to
mediate the discourse of pity and expose the existing power relations. In this sense,
Western media confronts two extremes of both worlds with the goal to explicitly
underline the dissimilarity between them. Therefore, depictions of North-South relations
in the mainstream journalism has a significant influence on the international
development as it builds up the images of “others” in minds of the Northern audience.
In accordance to the above mentioned theories of Richey (2016), Balaji (2011)
Cameron & Haanstra (2008) and Smith & Yanacoupulos (2004), author of this paper
draws a connection between the role of celebrities in humanitarian interventions and the
governance of North-South relations. The celebrities are hence viewed as corrupt but
“sexy” representation of the Northern “perfect” world, which has power over the poor
and dependent Global South, whereas the attractiveness of celebrities plays a major role
in building public opinion and justification of intervention.
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2.3 The term “celebrity” in the development studies
First of all, it is necessary to define and distinct celebrity as an academic term
within the scope of the development studies. Is being a celebrity means also being
famous? Do celebrities belong to the entertainment industry only and are exclusively
wealthy? Indeed one does not need to be a talented actress or brilliant singer to become
a celebrity nowadays. On the opposite any public figure, which attracts the attention of
certain number of offline or online followers may be considered as a celebrity.
Brockington (2014) defines celebrity as “public appearances, which are materially
beneficial, and where the benefits are enjoyed by the celebrity themselves and by other
stakeholders whose job is to manage the appearance of that celebrity” (pp. 90-91).
Hence, according to his definition, celebrities are people who are intentionally looking
and constantly working for public/media attention. Under this category fall
entertainment industry figures (e.g. actors, musicians, models, fashion bloggers etc.), as
well as politicians, social activists or environmentalists. Yet, random “one-day stars”,
who might have been interviewed by the reporters cannot be considered as celebrities.
Figures that appear in the media unintentionally (e.g. criminal, witnesses) are not
defined as celebrities as well.
Another definition of celebrity is introduced by Rojek (2001) as following: a
public figure receives a status of celebrity if he/she possesses “ascribed greatness
(enjoyed by royalty), achieved renown (won by great athletes) and attributed glory
(afforded by the media to reality TV stars)”. Turner (2004) defines a concept more
broadly by making a distinction that celebrities are public figures whose private lives
are more interesting for the society than their professional achievements. Additionally,
Boltanski & Thevenot (1991) define celebrity as a figure, who has a widespread
reputation, is recognized in public, has success, is distinguished from others, and has
opinion leaders, journalists and the media as own testimonials (pp. 222-30).
Summing up definitions brought up above, celebrity is thus a public figure (incl.
real, or inanimate, individuals or groups), whose main goals is to perform for profit and
to maximize public attention to its professional and private life. This definition will be
further used in this paper. Furthermore, celebrities, which are mentioned in this paper
both include entertainment industry figures (e.g. Angelina Jolie, Wyclef Jean), as well
as politicians (e.g. Bill Clinton) and intellectuals (e.g. Bill Gates).
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Celebrity is not a new phenomenon - human societies have always honored
certain personalities with fame. Hence, enhanced interest towards famous people is not
a product of modern highly digitalized world, but is one of the aspects of historical
development of humanity. Nevertheless, the degree of importance and the opportunity
of intrusion into celebrities’ life have dramatically increased. For instance, popular
media like Forbes.com claims that “We are now so celebrity-obsessed that when
someone orders a baby shower invitation, celebrity gossip websites and advertisers
think it is important.” (Goodson, 2013, p. n.p.a), showing hereby nearly abnormal
extolment of media figures.
The presence of celebrity triggers not only the interest of broader public, but
also of academics. Some remarkable researchers (cf. Richey (2016); Brockington
(2014)) claim that celebrities became the new actors in the North-South relations.
Enjoying the status of privileged, celebrities nowadays engage into many diverse life
aspects, including humanitarian and development interventions. Through these
interventions, relationships between celebrity industry and the development industry are
becoming ever more “intensive, formalized, systematically organized and competitive
(in that charities are competing to get access to celebrities)” (Brockington, 2014, p. 95).
Hence, celebrities have the power to influence development and communication issues
between developed North and developing South alongside with traditional political and
socioeconomic actors.
The author of this paper completely agrees with findings of Brockington (2014)
about the growth of importance of celebrities as development actors because of their
bright scope of public activities, which reach well beyond their initial professional
industry (i.e. entertainment). Being adored by the mainstream public, celebrities
smoothly integrate in all aspects of society, where their ideas or viewpoints are well
heard and somewhat accepted by majority. The celebrity humanitarianism is also
becoming an individual industry, where celebrities compete with each other in order to
gain a better coverage and representation in mainstream media, and in turn the best
image in minds of their followers.
While some academics still debate whether celebrity can be attributed as a
theoretical concept beyond media studies, most researchers (cf. L.A. Richey, L.
Chouliaraki, A. F. Cooper and I. Kapoor) agree that celebrity studies is a discipline
within the scope of development research. Due to their recognition among Western
14
audiences, some entertainment celebrities may be considered more trustworthy than
politicians. Whereas some politicians are only mighty within one country, big
celebrities are well-known globally. Thus, they have the power to bring the promoted
message to the world fast and remarkably. When celebrities engage into humanitarian
issues acting as aid celebrities, charities, aid ambassadors, celebrity diplomats (Richey
& Ponte, 2014), they become promoters of international development within NorthSouth context. In this way, celebrities shape a type of global government that rapidly
increases awareness of Western societies to international problems (Wilson, 2011).
Thus, celebrities contribute to the understanding of how North-South relations are
conceived and developed both from the viewpoint of Western and “Other” societies.
Being the “visible part of the development” (Richey, 2016) celebrity studies are hence
an important contemporary construct in the development studies.
2.4 Celebrity humanitarianism
“The phenomenon of celebrity activism in international affairs has become too
serious to be ignored” (Dieter & Kumar, 2008, p. 260). However, researchers debate
about the nature of celebrity humanitarian contributions. Only few (cf. (Cooper, 2008))
conceive these as a positive force for development and for decreasing world inequality.
The majority (as well as author of this paper) assumes the opposite:
“Celebrity acts of humanitarianism both reaffirm and perpetuate negative
discourses and representations of developing countries as places of poverty,
dependency, underdevelopment, and helplessness. Charity has never helped any
country escape underdevelopment.” (Rene Preval in Katz, 2013, p. 10)
In other words, celebrity humanitarianism intervenes into discourse of natural
development of the developing countries, preserves and even increases stereotyping
between “richer” West and “poorer” South and imposes “Western” values of
consumerism, industrialism, individualism and bank-dependence. In addition, some
critics claim that celebrity philanthropy is nothing more than a giant marketing
mechanism of celebrities themselves.
Nonetheless, the thoughtful discussion of the perceived celebrity contributions
to the global development will follow later in this paper (see Chapter 2.5). Forehand, the
author of this paper will draw a link between humanitarianism and celebrity, as well as
define types and forms of modern celebrity acts for development issues.
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As already mentioned above, celebrity humanitarianism has been particularly
trending in the past decade and has developed to numerous forms. As Brockington
(2014) claims, the industry of celebritized charity has become more organized and
systematic in the last decade than ever before. First of all, almost every UN agency and
NGO has at least one celebrity ambassador. For instance, Angelina Jolie has served as
the UN Goodwill Ambassador from 2001 to 2011 and was later appointed as Special
Envoy for Refugee Issues by UNHCR for her dedicated service (UNHCR, 2016). UN
Secretaries have started recruiting Hollywood and other Western celebrities as Goodwill
Ambassadors with the goal to raise the awareness about the global problems and
suffering of others, as well as shape global public opinion of UN missions (Cooper,
2008).
As both worldwide recognized and politically unbounded figures, celebrities are
believed to raise the public commitment to “save the world” by bringing the media
attention to the urgent problems of the developing countries and stimulating “Western”
developed communities to donate. Additionally, to raising fundraising, celebrities
promote general awareness, as well as engage and reward other supporters of the
humanitarian events. In order to do so, they commit field visits (e.g. in scope of her UN
participation, A. Jolie has committed more than 40 field visits around the world to
people displaced by conflict), they design products for raising donations (e.g. S.
Johansson designed handbags for Oxfam to help Haiti), they make contacts to powerful
people both in North and South possible (e.g. Claudia Schiffer as a spokesperson for
Make Poverty History) and participate in charity events, such as live entertainment
shows that aim to collect donations (e.g. Bob Geldof organized Live 8 charity concerts
with the cooperation of Make Poverty History). (Brockington, 2014)
Not all celebrities work for or cooperate with the agencies; some establish their
own NGO’s or humanitarian agencies. The goal of those private foundations is
debatable, since it is unclear whether such are established in own interests or to truly
contribute to the development process. Sean Penn has founded J/P Haitian Relief
Organization, which managed to receive a grant worth $8.75 million from The World
Bank and Government of Haiti and to fundraise further $80.000 from private donations
in order to relocate people living in displacement camps after the earthquake in 2010.
(J/P HRO, 2015)
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Another American public figure with Haitian background, Wyclef Jean has also
established a foundation “Yele Haiti” to raise donations for relief. Yet from $16
millions that he had collected (whereas first million was collected just over 24 hours
through Twitter), less has actually reached Haiti. In 2010 W. Jean was accused for
misusing the funds his organization had raised. It is estimated that W. Jean had spent $9
million alone on office rent and transport costs in private jets, as well as paid half-amillion salaries to his family members, who were also part of the organization. (Sean,
2010)
Thirdly, there are agencies that search for charitable activities for their clients or
vice versa look for celebritized clients to participate in humanitarian actions. Major
organizations promote charitable activities to the Hollywood and other celebrities, as
well as set up and manage the organizational issues. In this case, celebrities only need to
invest certain amount of financial funds, so that the organization will act in their name
and choose the most “image-making” disasters. Brockington (2014) names The Global
Philanthropy, The Cause Effect Agency and Independent Celebrity Liaison as some of
the most successful agencies in this field. Organizations that hunt for celebrity
philanthropists work either individually or in cooperation with NGO’s, who now also
have their own liaison officers. As “influential” celebrities are limited, NGO’s now have
to compete in order to get a profitable cooperation contract with an artist, who is
credible and relevant. That led to an establishment of agencies that advise NGOs how to
cooperate with celebrities or share access to the well-known public figures.
(Brockington, 2014)
Summing up, this subchapter has proved that the celebrity humanitarianism is
growing to a significant industry that includes celebrities, PR managers, NGOs, private
agencies and foundations, donors and other actors. The “hunt” for celebrities by NGOs
signifies even more the evidence that celebrities are becoming new important actors in
development issues. Katz (2013) claims that humanitarianism industry should arrange
more celebrity involvement in the nearest future. At the same time, celebrities need to
realize that liaison with experts, researchers and aid workers will ensure a sustainable
and visible impact for the development. Hence, celebrity humanitarianism may be
researched as an independent study field in scope of the development studies.
17
2.5 Understanding the nature of celebrity humanitarianism
After having defined all of the main concepts in celebrity humanitarianism
studies, it is possible to link them together to a theoretical framework, which will be
further used for an empirical analysis of this paper. In order to develop a theoretical
framework, the findings of the prominent researchers in the field of celebrity aid studies
are going to be provided and analyzed in this chapter.
Richey (2016) suggests that research on celebrity humanitarianism should be
grounded on three main theories:
1) international development studies with a focus on interdisciplinary literature
on aid celebrities;
2) media and communication studies with a focus on celebrities and
representation of “others”; and
3) global studies with a focus on the research links to new actors and alliances
in North – South relations.
Richey’s framework for analyzing celebrity humanitarianism explains clearly
author’s standpoint in seeing the necessity of researching the involvement of celebrities
into presenting development through public media, in scope of Communication for
Development project. Richey helps to draw a connection between international
development, media and global studies, which join to a critical field of celebrities for
development studies. Before mentioned literature findings prove the growth of
importance of celebrities as new global actors. Further literature findings in this chapter
support author’s opinion of corrupt representation of the Global South by Northern
celebrities through Western media.
First of all, two main contributors to the international development studies with
a focus on interdisciplinary literature on aid celebrities are Brockington (2014), who
argues that celebrities have a lobbying power in international development and Kapoor
(2013), who debates that celebrity aid promote global inequality and neoliberal
capitalism.
In details, Brockington conducted around 120 interviews with diverse NGO’s,
media and celebrity agents, journalists and PR managers, as well analyzed numerous
articles in the major UK newspapers. He concluded that celebrities have indeed become
18
important actors of the development. The link between the development sector and
celebrity industry has become more systematic and planed. As a result new professional
figures have emerged, who manage the charities of celebrities, including their choice of
“needy” by comparing them to the best investment for celebrity. However, an
understanding of the political economy of celebrity-charity-corporate relationship is still
absent and needs further investigation.
Kapoor (2013) argues that the economy of celebrity-charity-corporations
relationship is based on truly capitalism principles. He suggests that celebrities are using
the poor to make profit on the needs of others and hence create destruction mechanisms
for the South, while branding themselves or their charity organizations that make
fortunes on selling diverse goods (e.g. media productions, movies, bags, cosmetics, Tshirt etc.) for aid purposes. In this sense, celebrities with their good intentions develop
neoliberal capitalism, global inequality and rationalize poverty instead of reducing it.
When talking about their experience most celebrities are talking rather about their
feelings about poverty and their personal encounter with poverty, instead of actually
talking about the problem. Moreover, celebrities’ involvement into the issues of the
global development is controlled by the unaccountable elites of the political landscape.
Balaji (2011) proposes similar findings as Kapoor (2013), where he argues that
mediated discourses of pity are the most popular representations of disasters by modern
media. Moreover, he claims that American mainstream media specifically underlines “a
discursive adult-child relationship between whites and Others” (p. 52). Hence, Balaji
(2011) also draws attention to the unequal power relations between North and South.
On the opposite, Cooper (2008) praises celebritized humanitarianism as he
believes in its positive and innovative force for changing the world and interconnecting
diverse actors with each other. This may be true, in a way that celebrities do indeed
increase the awareness of the problem. However, the author of this paper does not
believe in its positive force because of the clearly visible unequal representation of
celebrities in comparison to local population of the Global South (s. Chapter 5 for more
details for case Haiti). Hence, the celebritized humanitarianism rather draws attention to
creating pity, as in Balaji (2011) than innovatively communicates the need for
development.
19
The main contributor of the second building stone of the celebrity
humanitarianism framework or of media and communication studies is Chouliaraki
(2012). She sees modern humanitarianism as a problem of communication between the
North, the South and its audiences. This issue was impelled by the changing technology
and roles in the media industry. The Northern audiences are both producers and
consumers of the public media and hence enforce the unrealistic representation of the
Others. Therefore, celebrities try to match the interests of the audience by publishing
corresponding texts and images in media instead of showing the real solidarity for
nations in need. Chouliaraki also agrees on consideration of the celebrity
humanitarianism as a instrumentalized market place, where celebrities and NGO’s
compete for donors and market shares in charity industry. This paper also seeks an
independent examination of mediated discourses about representation of celebritized
humanitarianism in Haiti and aims to confirm Chouliaraki (2012) views on corrupt and
“industrialized” representation of Haitians in need against celebrity humanitarians in
Western media.
Furthermore, Cameron & Haanstra (2008) also suggest that the representation of
development among Northern societies is very important for raising awareness and
fundraising campaigns, as well as for creation of social power relations between
Northern and Southern societies. Authors argue that in order to make development
interesting for the global North it is necessary to promote it as something sexy. Sexy
development images do not portray Southern receivers as poor and helpless victims and
rather highlight the generosity of Northern givers. However, exactly this representation
emphasizes the mightiness of the Northern charity.
In scope of the emerging literature on new actors and alliances, findings of
Wheeler (2013) prove once again the importance of celebrities as new development
actors. He argues that through humanitarianism celebrities engage also into the political
scenery on the international level. At the same time politicians may also act as
celebrities. Hence, celebrities engage public in politics, and politicians in turn become
actors of celebrity industry to win public attention.
Last but least, one of the most prominent researchers in the field Richey (2016)
herself believes that celebrities have the power to effectively reach and influence wider
audiences and have within an impact on local and international process of governance.
Celebrities are able to communicate and link together the values and authorities in
20
global humanitarian helping and in local receivers’ environments. Therefore, it is very
important to include celebrities in the modern development, humanitarianism and
political studies in order to be able to investigate the relations of power in the modern
global world.
Table 1 below summarizes briefly the key findings of the most prominent
researchers in the field of celebrity humanitarianism, highlighting their pro and contra
arguments. The further research in this thesis relies strongly on the findings presented in
this chapter. More precisely, author of this paper agrees with the Balaji (2011) that
Western media aims only at depicting Haitians as weak victims to stimulate the feeling
of pity. In this sense, the rich whites are reaffirmed in their privileged status over the
Others and the world inequality is brought up to the surface, as in Kapoor (2013).
Further, according to Cameron & Haanstra (2008), the development is sold as “sexy” in
order to increase the public attention and make communication for development
commercialized, which in turn confirms Brockington’s (2014) findings. Attractive
Northern celebrities suit well for the role of “sexy” communicators for development, yet
author of this paper supposes, in agreement with Richey (2016) and Chouliaraki (2012),
that celebrities lack the skills of communication of global issues and rather aim at
focusing the attention of their Global North audiences on their celebritized personality
and subjective opinion. Finally, the author of this paper agrees that celebritized aid is
becoming ever more popular and more trustworthy for the Northern audiences than
political charity. However, author disagrees that celebritized aid can be more beneficial
for the Global South because of the incapability of celebrities to manage development
properly and to abstract from their celebritized image in the minds of their audiences.
This means that the common Northern individual will always consider a celebrity doing
her/his job for publicity, disregarding if celebrity’s actions are approved or criticized.
Hence, author of this thesis disagrees with Cooper (2008), who strongly believes in the
positive force of celebritized aid. Therefore, the aims of this paper is to further analyze
how celebritized humanitarians are depicted in mainstream media against Haitians,
whether celebrities are marketed as “sexy” (Cameron & Haanstra, 2008) or as mighty
parents (Balaji, 2011) and how the inequality is communicated through them.
21
Table 1: Theoretical framework: an abbreviated literature review of main findings in the
field of celebrity studies (1998 - 2016)
Study
Key findings
Pro celebrity aid
Contra celebrity aid
Balaji (2011)
Brockington
(2014)
Cameron
Haanstra
(2008)
Mediated discourses of celebrities depict
Haitians as tragic and dysfunctional Others to
increase feeling of pity and by drawing the
attention of whites to underdeveloped blacks in
order to reaffirm a discursive unequal
relationship between whites (American) and
blacks (Haitians) as parent-child bond.
Celebrities are important
development actors because they
can mediate the relationship
between Northern consumers,
Southern receivers and global
elites.
Celebritized aid is becoming very commercial
instead of philanthropic. Celebrity
humanitarianism is only the terrain of elites in
the North.
& Representation of development as
sexy increases the probability of
interest towards the problem of
the common Northern donor, his
awareness and fundraising
willingness.
Chouliaraki
(2012)
Representation of sexy development emphasizes
the power of Northern charity and dependency
of global South on it.
Celebrity humanitarianism has problems of
communication between North and distant
Others. The new form of communicating global
poverty concentrates on the personality of
fundraiser, instead of the cause that he/she tries
to communicate.
Cooper (2008)
Positive and innovative force for
changing the world.
New actors are not yet well – equipped with
required skills, knowledge and connections to
other actors of development to create solutions
to the global problems.
Kapoor (2013)
Celebrity humanitarianism can
address some minor individual
and personal humanitarian causes.
Promotes neoliberal capitalism and global
inequality by emphasizing the uniqueness of the
North and dependency of Others.
Richey (2016)
Celebrities are new actors of
development who positively
influence the financing of the
development.
Celebrities as development agents lack
accountability and commitment to the cause of
the problem. The development responsibility of
new actors and alliances still remains indistinct.
22
3. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This chapter briefly introduces the reader to the history of Haiti, in particular to
its political discourses. The aim of this chapter is to prepare reader for the case, which
was chosen as a primary research field of this thesis.
The history of Haiti is very tragic (history facts are based on (Federal Research
Division, 2006)). It is characterized by natural disasters, racial discord, poverty and
political instability. Before Europeans arrived there Arawak and Carib Indians inhabited
the island Hispaniola. Hard labor practices and diseases almost annihilated the Indian
population during the 50 years of Spanish arrival. After 1697 French colonists settled on
the island turning it into coffee and sugar producing colony with about 800,000 slaves.
In the eighteenth century Haiti turned into strictly hierarchical society based on skin
color and wealth, which however began to unravel in the end of eighteenth century
when slaves outnumbered colonists and posed a threat to them. A numerous revolts
occurred and resulted in Spanish and British military interventions. In 1803 after a long
and bloody struggle the new nation of Haiti was finally declared an independent
republic followed by 300 years of colonialism. The early independent period was
characterized by political and financial instability and “black republic” found itself in
isolation facing the ongoing threat of interventions. The first head of state, lieutenant
Dessalines ruled the country through force and was assassinated two years after coming
into power. The next decade of Haitian history was known as territorial partition of the
island by two remaining leaders who both died in 1820 when Haiti was reunited by
General Jean-Pierre Boyer who defended Haitian sovereignty for twenty years of his
rule. He negotiated a payment of 60 million francs to France in return of country’s
recognition and trade relations restorations which imposed an economic burden to
future generations.
Political instability and constant unrests provoked interventions by U.S. in the
beginning of twentieth century, which in 1915 resulted in the twenty years of
occupation over Haiti by U.S. During this period Haitian economy was stabilized and its
infrastructure improved. The following period in Haitian history was full of struggles
between elite mulattoes and black population resulted in a victory of pro-black
23
nationalist François Duvalier in 1957 whose dictatorial ruling methods of blackmail and
terror were harsh even by Haiti’s standards.
In the early ninetieth Jean-Bertrand Aristide who had a great support from the
poorest Haitians von the presidential elections. He strived to free Haiti from ethnic,
racial and economic hierarchy but met a strong opposition by a military coup, who
seized control over the government in 1991 and only in 1994 after three years of
political chaos Aristide was restored in power. The second half of the ninetieth was not
more stable. Constant election frauds and lack of trust, inability to organize political
election for years lead to ongoing political and economic crisis in the region. In the
beginning of 2000th the GDP growth turned to be negative in Haiti. The streets of
Haitian cities were fled with militant battles and gangs. United States-led Multilateral
Interim Force in response to humanitarian crisis had to bring international troops to
Haiti who restored security and enabled food and medical supply.
The elections in 2006 were finally peaceful and legitimate and brought Rene
Preval, a former prime minister and successor of Aristide into power. The most recent
presidential elections of 2010-2011 were won by Michel Martelly - a compass musician
and entertainer whose lyrics have poked fun at the whole concept of the Haitian
presidency. (Wadner, 2010) Even subject of research of this paper, Jean Wyclef,
American with Haitian origin rapper musician and actor has announced his candidacy
on presidential elections in August 2010 however his bid was rejected as he could not
meet the necessary requirement of having lived in the country for at least five years
before the election date (Guyler Delva, 2010).
The devastating earthquake that took place in Haiti in 2010 brought tragic
consequences to the country and its inhabitants. The island of Hispaniola that is shared
between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, has always been seismically active. The
magnitude was 7.0 by Richter scale and 3, 5 million people were affected by the disaster
whereas 220 thousand people were claimed to have died as its result. Almost 200 000
houses were destroyed or damaged severely. More than a million people became
homeless. Rubbles and debris covered huge surface on Haiti. The earthquake caused
death of 25% of all civil servants, more than half of administrative buildings were
destroyed. More than a million people had to live in camps undergoing constant risks of
storms and flooding. ( DEC, 2015)
24
The tragedy that happened to Haiti required immediate and effective actions.
Many national governments, charitable and profitable organizations began coordinating
humanitarian aid to save Haitians (s. Appendices A and B for detailed financial
information). Either relief and rescue workers were directly sent to the zone or monetary
support campaigns were held. By September 5th 3,5 billion dollar were collected. The
governments of US, the UK, Israel, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Brazil, Italy and
Cuba sent over 1000 qualified personnel each. Field hospitals, naval vessels, transport
aircraft facilities were organized. (theGuardian, 2010)
The distribution of mentioned above 3,5 billion dollar raised was unequal. The
largest recipient of U.S. money was U.S. government itself (s. Appendix B), as well as
donations from other countries. They were used to reimburse these countries for sending
the relief forces to Haiti. 42% went to private and public NGOs. Less than 1% of all
donations went to Haitian government, whereas Haitian NGOs received even less.
Large percentage of funds was directed to international aid agencies and big NGOs like
American Red Cross who received 486 million alone. Some money was sent to forprofit organizations whose business is disasters. Finally some percentage of the funds
was pledged but never received. (Katz, 2013)
25
4. METHODOLOGY
The first section of this paper dealt with relevant theoretical constructs for the
topic of celebrity humanitarianism. By a throughout analysis of the academic works in
the previous chapters, first conclusions about how celebrities are depicted in academic
literature were drawn. It was also discussed which current trends of celebrity
humanitarianism exist, what and how celebrities communicate to the global community
and how do they involve into the development processes. Based on theoretical findings,
the autonomous empirical research will be further conducted. Thus, the second part of
the thesis concentrates on the empirical study, which implies the discussion of the
research methods, data collection and analysis, results and eventually a conclusion. The
study is based on analysis of celebrity activism in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010 and
includes an exploration of popular and social media sources for factors depicting a
propagation of negative discourse and representation of Haiti as a place with poverty,
underdevelopment, helplessness and dependency on the global North.
2.1 Research method
The first step in the empirical research process is the choice of a research
method also known as a research design. The conducted study in this paper is a
combination of two qualitative research methods: a semiotic and discourse analysis. The
discourse analysis is chosen due to its ability to evaluate texts and interpret its
surrounding discourse, and thus understand the true meaning, knowledge and power
behind the words (Phillips & Jørgensen 2002). Semiotic analysis enhances the text
interpretation by providing a method of visual material analysis. Semiology is a study of
signs and entails the deployment of set of concepts that suggest the meanings of signs in
an image (Rose, 2007).
The combination of those two complementary research methods provides more
insights into the problem of inequality between USA (as the image of the developed
Northern world) and Haiti depicted and fostered by celebrity interventions into
humanitarian actions post earthquake in 2010. The discourse analysis aims to explore
how Haiti and Haitians are portrayed in comparison to the Western celebrities in digital
media texts. At the same time, semiotics investigates the comparison in the digital
media images, searching within for signs and codes. Therefore, the combination of the
26
discourse and semiotics allows simultaneous analysis of digital media articles with text
(as news, article, discussion or also description to an image) and images (as photos, ads,
front covers etc.).
The power of transnational media, depicting humanitarian and awareness-raising
campaigns lies within its ability to legitimize certain discursive narratives (e.g.
colonialism or inequality) through framing social reality as expected by the majority of
its audience (Entman, 1993). Framing in terms of media studies refers to selection of
aspects about events or people, which should appear in media stories to create “maps of
meaning” that reflect the already existing beliefs about reality. (Hall, 2000) In order to
draw audience’s attention to the particular frame some details of communicated text or
photography are brought up and made more outstanding than other facts, promoting
within a certain causal interpretation or recommendation for understanding a cause
described (Duvall, 2015). Therefore, analysis of semantic and discursive narratives of
celebrity activism proposed or even impelled by Western media leads to an
understanding of social structural relationships between the Global North and South and
its influence on the international development. In other words, Northern media
consumers form their “maps of meaning” of development based on the narratives
constructed by the Western media. Furthermore, according to the literature reviewed in
Chapter 2, celebrity activism does not promote development but rather increases
inequality (cf. Richey (2016), Chouliaraki (2012), Balaji (2011)). Hence, media
coverage of Haitian relief efforts and politics should prove the hypothesis of corrupt
communication for development of celebritized humanitarianism. The importance of
media representation of development, which is proposed by the author of this paper,
may be summarized by Duvall’s (2015) assumption that
Relief efforts became entertainment spectacles for western audience
consumption, the earthquake victims in Haiti were marginalised […]. The suffering of
Third World peoples has historically been “staged, packaged, and disseminated” by
western companies, governments, and NGO’s to further their own interests. The media
spectacle of celebrity activism may promote stars’ images and neoliberal interventions
while subordinating serious systemic issues in the Third World.” (p.6)
In order to prove, “media spectacle of celebrity activism” Duvall (2015) also
applies semiotic and critical discourse analysis on a number of materials from
journalistic and gossip media, which makes a justification of chosen methodological
avenues for this paper.
27
4.1.1 Semiology
Semiology or semiotics in its different forms has been a popular method across
diverse disciplines, which have interest in visual culture. Hence, semiotics can be
applied to many sorts of visual materials. In this paper, semiology will be applied to
digital images found in the digital versions of popular news and gossip media.
The high degree of applicability of semiotic research method for social studies
was already proven in the late 1980’s by Judith Williamson (1978), who discovered that
many forms of social differences (e.g. gender, social class, race) can be explored by
analysing images. She explored the meaning of the images through the advertising,
which she considered as “the most influential ideological forms in contemporary
capitalist societies” (Williamson, 1978: cited in Rose, 2012, p 107). Goldman (1992, p.
1) adds that we are so used to ads that do not recognise their deeper social meaning and
associate them with their ideological status anymore. However, ads bear much more
information than just a promotion of the brand, product or service. Semiology as a
method is able indeed “penetrate the apparent autonomy and reality of adverts, in order
to reveal their ideological status” (Rose, 2012, p. 107). Along with ads, semiology can
be applied to all types of visual material (Bignell, 2002).
In general, semiology is the analysis of meaning. Semiologists define “meaning”
in the framework of ideology, where ideology is a construct that legitimates unequal
social power relations. In line with the Marxism theory, ideology reflects the interests of
the power or the egoistic interests of the dominant group that aims to impose their
power to the rest of the world. Hence, semiotics aims to explore the signs for social
inequalities enforced by particular ideology. (Rose, 2012)
The key term of semiology is the sign. The study of signs is largely dependent
on the work of de Saussure, who developed a systematic explanation of how language
works, where he discussed that the sign is the basic unit of the language. The sign
consists from two parts, which are closely interrelated with each other: the signified and
the signifier. The signified is a mental concept or image. The signifier is its image, text
or sound. Although integrated with each other, the relationship between signified and
signifier is not always coherent. Saussure explains this through use of different words in
foreign languages for one object, as well as through multiple meanings of word/concept
in one particular language. Hence, that’s truly important is the meaning, which is
28
attached to signified and signifier. The aim of semiology is to establish the relation
between meanings (signifieds) and signifiers and to show within how the signified is
understood and interpreted by its viewers in fact. (Rose, 2012)
With the help of semiology this paper tries to get the deeper understanding of the
social meaning embedded into the images of celebrities in Haiti that are depicted against
Haitians. The role of signifier on the most of those images is to prove (mostly) Northern
societies the presence of celebrities in Haiti and thus guarantee that donations are
transferred to sufferers of Haiti. Yet, the underlying signified may be to illustrate the
undeveloped Haitians against powerful celebrities (see Chapter 5 for analysis).
In order to access the underlying meaning of the signified and signifier and
hence understand the ideology of society behind visual material, codes (or also referent
systems, mythologies) are applied by semiologists. Codes enable understanding of
“orders of social life, of economic and political power and of ideology” (Hall, 1980, p.
134). Codes are therefore sets of “conventional ways of making meaning that are
specific to particular groups of people” (Rose, 2012, p. 128). For instance, in order to
promote development as sexy (see Cameron & Haanstra, 2008), people that are already
encoded as sexy have to participate in the visual materials. As one of the sexiest woman
in the world, Angelina Jolie is surely encoded as sexy in the Northern society and hence
expresses the ideology that female celebrities have to be attractive and moreover kind,
altruistic and open to the Other’s problems. In other words female celebrities have to
represent traditional form of nurturing femininity, which is in line with dominant
masculinity (expressed/expected by male celebrities), foundational of colonialism,
according to Duvall (2015).
Seen from the qualitative research viewpoint, the process of coding contains
assignment of codes, classifications, or names to certain elements of data. Coding helps
to sort the data to more general categories. Categories for coding can be developed from
intensive work with the data, without adhering to a precise pattern. Hence, the first step
in the semiologic analysis is to develop a set of codes that have to be tested in order to
understand signs and their signifiers/signified. The codes used in this paper base on the
categories provided by Dyer (1982), who created a checklist for understanding the
symbolization of human signs. The Table 2 lists all categories from the Dyer’s list that
29
are relevant for the current research. Hence, the codes that are elaborated in the table 2
below will be further used for the analysis of this paper (see Chapter 5).
Table 2: Codes for semiotic analysis
Signs
Description
Representation of bodies
Age
How old are the figures in the images and what does age transmit?
Innocence? Helplessness? How often kids appear in the pictures?
Gender
Power of masculinity compared to emotionality of femininity? How
often woman appear in the images?
Race
Is whiteness normalized? What is the ratio between black vs. white
people in the image?
Body Attractiveness of the bodies. Are people obese?
Looks
How is the stereotypically beauty pictured? Which beauty norms are
enforced by celebrities?
Representation of manner:
Expression
Who is shown as happy or sad? What facial and other expressions are
used to show that?
Eye contact
Who is looking at whom and with which intensity? What is the nature
of those looks?
Pose
Who is standing or lying down? How does pose illustrate the social
position?
Representation of activity:
Touch Who is touching what and with effects?
Positional What is spatial arrangement of the figures? Who is positioned as
superior and who inferior? What is degree of intimacy?
communication
What effects do settings have on the images? Are settings normal or
Settings exotic? How set up is the image? Does one see the post effects of
disaster?
Source: Based on Dyer (1982)
4.1.2 Discourse analysis
The semiotics described in the previous chapter provides a precise
understanding of the production of meaning through signs in images. However, as Rose
(2012, p. 139) argues “nothing is ever just visual” and hence all visual images embed
30
also other semiotic resources. The discourse analysis can perfectly enhance semiotic
analysis by providing an interpretation of texts and finding the ways for making
meaning to the concepts. The discourse analysis method focuses thus on how discourse
and discursive produce knowledge through discourse. In general, discourse analysis is
used to study the ways social power abuse, inequality and forms of discrimination are
exerted in social and political texts. In the context of popular media analysis, discourse
analytical method is used to find a critical perspective on the field of study. (Phillips &
Jørgensen, 2002)
The methodology of discourse analysis was mostly developed by Michel
Foucault’s theoretical arguments. In his viewpoint, discourse “is a particular knowledge
about the world which shapes how the world is understood and how the things are done
in it” (Rose, 2012, p. 190). Moreover, the particular things and their meanings are
connected to each other through a so called discursive formation.
Discourse analysis is trying to explore, which knowledge is currently taken as
true (Winther & Philips, 2002). At the same time, to make people believe in a particular
knowledge some form of power must be exerted. Foucault (1972) believes that there is a
strong relation between knowledge and power. He also argues that the effectiveness of
symbiosis of power/knowledge is much more important than the real truth. Say if
powerful leaders are able to enforce certain knowledge to the wider audiences, it will be
indeed considered as the righteous one even if explicit contra arguments exist. History
is rich with examples depicting the supremacy of power over truth. Hence, in some
historical moments a certain truth does not exist. Instead certain historical contexts have
their own discursive formation or the “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1972, p. 131).
Studying discourse includes investigation of how the expert knowledge is
constructed through different statements and how these statements are communicated to
the wider public through media channels. Hence, the discourse analysis of this paper
aims to explore how the discourse of world inequality between the Northern sponsors
(or equally donors, helpers, humanitarians, celebrities) and the Southern receivers (i.e.
Haitians in this particular case) are communicated through media and in particular
through news. In other words, how current regime of truth tries to reinforce the
supremacy of richer North over poorer South. It tries to answer the question, why we
actually believe that the South needs our Northern intervention in their natural discourse
and which justifications we receive for that behaviour from the “powerful elite”.
31
Therefore, the discourse analysis will search for particular patterns in texts
accompanied with images depicting the celebrities (i.e. Jolie, Penn and Jean) during
their humanitarian actions in Haiti after the earthquake. In order to answer a research
question, the discourse analysis will focus on the similar signs as semiotics (see Table
w), as well as try to answer following supplementary questions:

How are the donors and receivers illustrated?

Who is the target group for the particular news content?

How is the earthquake harm described in the texts? Is it visible on visual
materials?

Are diverse texts contingent regarding specific words, metaphors and
other linguistic (also visual) expressions?

Which codes/signs/stereotypes of Northern and Southern cultures are
present?
4.2 Research settings
For the purpose of empirical analysis, the event of earthquake in Haiti in 2010
(see Chapter 3) was used. As already mentioned in the previous chapter, the natural
disaster has enforced a large interest of celebrity humanitarianism, whereas most of the
contributing celebrities were of U.S American origin, depicting to some degree the postcolonial relationship between U.S and Haiti.
The semiotic analysis of visual material and discourse analysis of articles aimed
to answer the main research question:
RQ: How is celebrities’ humanitarianism depicted in media in comparison
to Haitian population?
In order to collect visual and textual materials for the semiotic and discourse
analysis, the internet (primary browsing application: www.google.com) was browsed
with tags similar to: “jolie/ penn/ jean in haiti”, “jolie/penn/jean earthquake haiti”,
“celebrities helping Haiti”, “j/po”, “celebrity aid Haiti” and similar. From the suggested
websites only trustworthy and popular sources were chosen, namely CNN
(International), FoxNews (US), Telegraph (UK), Daily Mail (UK), Rolling Stones (US),
as well as web pages of NGO’s, including UN and SOS Children Village. As a result, 3
32
images per celebrity were chosen among larger amount of visual materials available
online. The author of this paper tried to chose different pictures depicting controversy
actions. Despite this attempt, it was observed that most of the images depicting Haiti
relief efforts by celebrities are similar in form, background and image, therefore limited
amount of chosen images can be considered as representative and generalizable for the
event of celebritized interventions in Haiti. Nonetheless, lesser amount of chosen
images increases the subjectivity of analysis and higher probability of personal bias,
which may be considered as a limitation of this thesis (for further limitations, see
chapter 4.4.).
The images were then analysed with the help of semiotic codes, developed in the
previous chapter (s. Chapter 4.1.1). Simultaneously, the search for textual material was
initiated. Here as well the controversy text depicting similar events from the different
sides was preferred. In order to understand the underlying meaning, as well as
discursive “truth”, the codes and questions developed in the previous chapter were used.
In summary, three texts (i.e. one pro celebrity) were chosen (s. Appendix C for full
articles). Namely:
1. T1 is a combination of abstracts from two articles, published in Rolling
Stones magazine in 2011. First article is a critical viewpoint of journalist Ms.
Reitman on the failure of international aid organizations in general, and of
Sean Penn’s J/PO in particular in Haiti. Sean Penn was very disappointed
with the article and its accusations, so that he wrote a response article one
month later, describing his position.
This combination gives an interesting ground to explore how the “truth”
about Haiti and humanitarian organizations involved is communicated by different
actors.
2. T2 is an example of a standard NGO article reflecting celebrity’s field visit.
In this particular case, UNHCR reports about Angelina Jolie’s visit to Haiti
shortly after the earthquake. Due to its similarity to many other similar
articles published by other charity agencies, it is a good example to evaluate
the standards of reporting by international charity organizations, which mix
dry facts with some notes of celebrity emotionality.
33
3. T3 is an abstract from the popular newspaper The New York Times, which
depicts mismanagement of funds by Wyclef Jean in aftermath of post-quake.
This text presents another side of charity by critically questioning the reader,
where does he donate.
The results of the data analysis are presented in the next chapter (s. Chapter 5).
34
1
2
3
4
5
6
1
Wyclef Jean: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1304716/Wyclef-Jeans-Haiti-president-bid-foiled-isnt-island-resident.html
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100803/GAL-10Aug03-5330/media/PHO-10Aug03-242106.jpg
3
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2217090/Wyclef-Jeans-Haiti-charity-cesspool-fraud-broken-promises-collapsed-mountain-debt.html
2
35
7
8
.
4
Angelina Jolie: http://www.unhcr.org/thumb1/4b7287f720.jpg
http://www.sos-usa.org/newsroom/angelina-jolie-visits-sos-childrens-village-haiti
6
http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article200498.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200/image-3-for-angelina-jolie-visits-haiti-gallery-799567543.jpg
7
Sean Penn: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01615/sean-penn-susan-sa_1615048i.jpg
8
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/sean-penn-responds-to-rolling-stone-s-haiti-story-20110930
9
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/10/25/sean-penn-haiti-cholera-refugee-crisis.html
5
36
9
4.2.1 Data selection for cases
This chapter introduces the reader with the personalities of three U.S celebrities
chosen for the precise observation or as main empirical cases in this paper and explains
the rationale for choosing exactly them. In brief, Jolie, Penn and Jean were chosen due
to their binary opposite representation of humanitarian engagement style, traditional
gender roles reflecting Western dominant discourses of femininity and masculinity, as
well as racial identity. Moreover, due to their authentic humanitarian intervention all
three celebrities figure frequently as dominant research subjects in academic literature.
In justification of choosing Jolie, Jean and Penn as research cases for this thesis, author
refers to the latest research contribution Richey (2016), Duvall (2015), Katz (2013) and
Petrie (2008).
Angelina Jolie is probably one of the most noticeable persons in the global
humanitarian aid and hence cannot be neglected by analysing the topic of celebrity
humanitarianism. In comparison to other two research subjects of this paper, Jolie’s
humanitarianism frames the traditional narrative of authentic motherhood with caring
attitude towards earthquake victims and sincere adoptions of children from other Global
South nations (Duvall, 2015). Media usually contrasts Jolie against Madonna, yet
Madonna did not actively participate in Haiti relief efforts and hence is out of scope of
this thesis. On the other hand, Penn and Jean competed openly with each other with the
goal to gain legitimacy and authenticity as celebrity activists in Haiti in the Western
media. Duvall (2015) believes that the competition between two binary opposite in their
racial and political identity male figures actually represents the “post-colonial power
dynamics and reinforces constructions of he cosmopolitan West and weak Global
South” (p.2). Therefore, Jolie as a white female with exaggerated motherhood
characteristics, Penn as a dominant white male with “authentic” activism as narrated by
media and Jean as black emigrant male with lack of credibility, playing a symbolic role
in contrast to his white fellows, serve as good examples to observe how Western media
depicts celebrity humanitarianism within the framing of nationality, gender as well as
representation of neo-colonial ideologies. Moreover, their diverse and conflicting
personalities enrich research to the demanded level and allow excluding further
celebrities, who participated in post-earthquake aid from the current analysis.
37
Further in this chapter, personality of each celebrity is presented in a larger
detail.
Before 2001 and her role in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Angelina Jolie was not
even close to an example of a good and decent humanitarian. She lived quite a wild life
with frequent media scandals focused on her misappropriated behaviour. However, after
encountering the poverty and misery of life in Cambodia Jolie has changed her opinion
and became world-concerned about charity, refugees and AIDS or war orphans. (Petrie,
2008)
Already in August 2001, Jolie was appointed as UN Goodwill Ambassador and
in 2005 she was awarded with the Citizen of the World Award. In this position, Jolie
has committed more than 40 field visits to troubled locations, including Iran, Syria,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti and African countries. Probably there are no political or
natural disasters in which she did not participate. Angelina Jolie’s humanitarianism has
contributed to media coverage and public awareness about multiple problematic
international issues, which otherwise may had been neglected by Western world (Repo
& Yrjölä, 2011). Together with her partner and later husband Brad Pitt she has also
adopted four kids from Cambodia, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Namibia before giving birth
to their own two children. Especially for adopting children from the disastrous regions,
Jolie became highly known as a leading American humanitarian. Her presence in news
and gossip media as a mediator of a do-gooding remains hardly unremarkable even by a
person, who is non-interested in celebrity news. Each public appearance of big Jolie-Pitt
(or Brangelina) family makes news headline and brings the family remarkable revenues.
Alone for selling the rights of the first baby pictures of Shiloh adopted from Namibia,
Jolie has received $10 millions (Kelly, 2006). As Brangelina claims all received money
went to charity. Through almost daily documenting of Jolie’s professional life as an
actress, film maker and humanitarian, as well as private life, an attention to some
developing countries may be brought and intensified, motivating people to donate or at
least increase their awareness of the global problems. However, only certain chosen
discourses of the developing countries are mostly brought up. (Petrie, 2008)
As for her activity in Haiti, Jolie has visited the country several times after the
earthquake, alone and with Brad Pitt, whereas also as guests of W. Jean’s Yele
foundation. In sum they donated over $1 million for humanitarian needs. (People, 2010)
38
Another important figure in humanitarianism - Sean Penn has managed to
collect even more financial resources to help Haiti. He has founded J/P Haitian Relief
Organization, which managed to receive a grant worth $8.75 million from The World
Bank and Government of Haiti and to fundraise further $80.000 from private donations
in order to relocate people living in displacement camps after the earthquake in 2010.
(J/P HRO, 2015) He has also not just paid random field visit to Haiti, but stayed on spot
for a long-term and even today five years after the quake J/P Organization still exists
and contributes to the development of Haiti.
Sean Penn is also A-list Hollywood actor, filmmaker, political activist and
critical journalist. In comparison to A. Jolie, Penn’s humanitarianism style is more
radical as the actor tries to intervene in the actual conduct of politics and “to break the
rules of what is considered appropriate celebrity behavior by criticizing his and other
governments’ practices” (Rosamond, 2016, p. 149). His radical humanitarianism style
suits well Duvall’s (2015) theory of dominant traditional and colonial masculine
intervention methods.
Long before Sean Penn became a caring humanitarian, he was considered as a
“bad boy”, quite similarly to Jolie. Penn was arrested for assaulting photographer and
beating his wife Madonna in the 90’s. He was actively trying to promote himself as a
hypermasculine figure. Nonetheless, in 2002 Penn started his protests against George
Bush in 2002 in Iraq. His first humanitarian involvement was in 2005 during the
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, when he suddenly changed his public appearance to
a shy and non-communicative person in order to match the public expectations of a
humanitarian. As humanitarian, Penn exploits further his image of masculinity, which
he now turned into the direction of “hands on” attitude, practical actions (e.g. personally
delivering food and medicine) and participation in reconstruction works. Hence, Penn is
one of fewer celebrities, who is depicted in actually participating in help delivery
himself and not only collecting financial aid. However, with such image Penn highlights
the assumptions of masculine power and protection of helpless, especially women and
children, which is illustrated on the most images of him as a humanitarian (also visible
in analysis of this thesis, s. Chapter 5). (Rosamond, 2016) Therefore, Sean Penn
outstands from common celebrity aiders and serves as an interesting example to
observe.
39
The third personality chosen for this thesis is Wyclef Jean. He was born in Haiti
to medium wealthy family, yet has soon emigrated with his parents to U.S., where he
has managed to establish a rap/hip-hop group (The Fugees) and become very famous in
1990’s. Although Jean has only seldom visited his native country, he wore Haitian
symbols and was very popular on the island. So popular that he even ran for president of
Haiti in August 2010, half a year after the earthquake. However, has never made it due
to the reason that he was not even a resident of the country. Nonetheless, the hype about
his political activities in Haiti opened an opportunity for the young population to vote
for people they know and not ultimately for the “old-guard politicians who had let down
so many hopes” (Katz, 2013, p. 215).
Similarly to S. Penn, Wyclef Jean has also established a foundation “Yele Haiti”
to raise donations for relief. Yet from $16 millions that he had collected (whereas first
million was collected just over 24 hours through Twitter), less has actually reached
Haiti. In 2010 W. Jean was accused for misusing the funds his organization had raised.
It is estimated that W. Jean had spent $9 million alone on office rent and transport costs
in private jets, as well as paid half-a- million salaries to his family members, who were
also part of the organization. (Sean, 2010)
Wyclef Jean is taken under observation because he should serve as a perfect
example of American dream come true for his Haitian nationals. He is an inspirational
source for young Haitian people, showing that it is possible to exit the misery and
become rich or in other words “getting out and striking rich” (Katz, 2013, p. 202). At
the same time, however, he managed to misuse the donations he collected and hence his
case can provide a clear explanation to the question of a common charity provider:
“where does my money go?” Moreover, according to Duvall’s (2015) findings, Jean is
portrayed by the Western media as irresponsible activists, who lacks credibility for his
actions and words, which highlights his black racial background, which is still framed in
media as underdeveloped.
4.3 Research limitations
There are several limitations of the present study. First limitation considers the
choice of sample, its size and variety. Modern digital media entails numerous visual and
textual materials in the field of celebrities in general, and in Haitian relief efforts in
particular. Therefore, it was necessary to filter the useful information from the major
40
rest, which made empirical analysis limited to three celebrities only, as well as 9 visual
and 3 textual materials. The limited sample size leads to increased biased and lower
variety and may worsen the interpretation ability of the researcher, as well as decrease
the potential for generalization of observed findings. On the one side, the evaluation of
quality of text or image and its richness of detail is rather a subjective author’s decision.
On the other side according to Rose (2012) the discourse analysis in particular does not
depend on the quantity of material analyzed, but rather on is quality. Nonetheless, the
larger sample size could have provided more detailed and interesting results.
The lack of finite objectivity and the likelihood of other interpretations of the
material, represent further limitations of the present discourse and semiotic analysis.
Increased probability of biased opinion also decreases the validity of the present
research. Thirdly, the empirical content may have been worsen through browsing
Internet content. The reliability of the information available in the Internet may not
always be absolutely proven. Nonetheless, only sources with traceable account were
chosen. In order to increase validity and reliability, additional methodological avenues
could have been applied, which would also increase author’s independence from
existing literature findings. For instance, an empirical analysis could have been enriched
by an opportunity to conduct qualitative interviews or focus groups with media
representatives or celebrities to evaluate their opinion, without probable media
censorship. Application of quantitative methods would also add up to better
generalization of findings. For example, surveying common Western audience of
mediated discourses would give insights into the existing or constructed framing of
development in the Northern minds. The author of this paper considers further enhanced
empirical research as an interested further research investigation.
41
5. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
This chapter seeks answer to the research question by analyzing the visual and
textual materials collected during the data collection process. Its main aim is to
understand the ideology of depiction of the global charity and consequently depict is
discursive practices as part of current “regime of truth” (Foucault, 1972). Due to the
reason that modern ideology considers a celebrity humanitarianism as a brand, this
research also employs methods used in media and marketing studies.
5.1 Analysis of visual material
The first glance at the selected pictures reveals some basic signs of earthquake
devastation in Haiti. The three main explicit signs are:
(1) people living in tents;
(2) injured children;
(3) search/urge for water and food.
It is also easy to identify the signs of charity. These include people giving food
or water to others; communicating with victims of earthquake; actively helping to carry
stuff or organizing the everyday life in Haiti. Hence, the signifier of connection between
earthquake and charity is the presence of celebrities at the devastated spot, which carry
the message (signified) “We are here for you!”
However, these signs create only the general picture. The truth is that in the
scope of the current ideology, the audience of images depicting celebrities’ engagement
in Haiti might see some implicit signs, which leads to other signified. The message that
is being sent is to justify the Northern intervention to the Southern problems,
disregarding if the help and its extent is really needed or not. Moreover, modern
societies are used to see celebrities as humanitarians. Thus it is part of their job to
appear (as fast as possible) in Haiti to promote themselves and make pictures with
earthquake victims. In order to find out how the signified of “global inequality” and
“celebrity lobbying power in international development” is communicated through
visual material, a second deeper look at the images should be taken.
42
According to the checklist proposed by Dyer (1982) and adapted to the topic of
this paper, following main signs are presented in the picture:

Children: most of pictures present children, who might be injured or
look healthy, yet are always depicted as very happy to be close to
celebrities. Grown-ups, who are presented in the pictures are usually
passive by-passers, wearing t-shirts of charity organizations, hence being
temporary workers and probably not the residents of Haiti at all.
Why does Angelina Jolie prefer taking pictures with young people? One of the
reasons is that average Haitian population is quite young and there is simply no one else
to take pictures with. Yet, more underlying reason is that images of children increase the
misery transmitted with the picture. It shows to the Northern audience that most people
in Haiti are uneducated and in urgent need in schools and teachers. At the same time,
there is A. Jolie – educated, intelligent, famous and ready to share. The contrast, which
is created through placing her with dozens of Haitian kids, stimulates the Northern
societies to actively donate to her projects in Haiti, which is surely the act of humanity.
However, once donated people start to feel their contribution to the international
development and hence expect that their Northern values will be set through in Haiti,
creating within a dependency of the South.
It is easy to blame A. Jolie for picturing herself on the contrast to poor children
of Haiti. Nonetheless, the direction of correlation effect between the expectations of the
Northern audience and Jolie’s image in the mainstream journalism remains unclear. Is it
Jolie, who aims to transmit the intensity of misery through portraying suffering
children? Or is the mainstream media, which wishes to depict all humanitarians around
children to anticipate what their reading audience wants to see? As Richey & Ponte
(2015) argue, the images and representations are becoming very important in
development “branding”, whereas the image of development is misguided and is rather
linked to the mechanisms of global capitalism and neo-colonialism. In this sense the
celebrity humanitarianism functions as a market, where the Northern audience is
“buying” the image that mainstream journalism is “selling” through a celebrity, who in
turn just plays his/her role of development agent.

Women prevail: 4 of 9 pictures presented in this analysis feature young
and grown-up female Haitians, who are shown as receiving aid from
43
celebrities. Men are either passive or take part in demonstration (Image 1
for Wyclef Jean).
Femininity is considered to be weaker and more emotional (e.g. according to
Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions). The Northern media agencies place women in
pictures with the same goal as children (described above): to enforce more compassion
of developed nations for suffering undeveloped Haitians. For instance, image 9 for Sean
Penn features him as the only male carrying sack of (undefined) food himself, while
women around him also carry heavy stuff. What is the reason that other men are not
helping women? What does media trying to show to the Northern audiences? Is it that
there are no men left in Haiti after the earthquake and only Sean Penn can now help
ladies? Or maybe it is showing the traditional stereotypes that women are supposed to
be responsible for household. In any case, the signified here is the gender inequality in
Haiti and hence underdevelopment in comparison to the North, which corresponds to
Duvall’s (2015) findings.

Black, overweight, white or colourfully dressed: the receivers in all
pictures are Black (which is common for Haiti), grown-up female are
noticeably overweight (=bad eating habits, no diet, no sports), kids on
the opposite very thin (= lack of nutrition). Many are dressed in
colourful/white clothes that contrast extensively with their black skin.
Haiti has a long history of being a colony. Traditionally, colony was ruled by
powerful white nations. A. Jolie, S. Penn and many charity workers on the background
of the pictures are White, which looks very contrasting to Black Haitians, in particular
when wearing very bright clothes. In case of Haitian born Wyclef Jean the contrast is
not so obvious. Yet, he also finds the way to show his prevalence over locals with
standing above others and with heavy gesticulation. This proves that Haiti is still
traditionally oriented with possibly existence of racial discrimination. Moreover,
celebrities are considered to be examples of modern beauty norms in the developed
societies. The ex-sex symbol of US – Angelina Jolie is skinny, with clear skin, decent
make-up, done hair and elegantly dressed on all pictures. As it is known in the
developed societies, the beauty costs money. Here another question arises: how many
stylists and other assistance did Jolie bring with her to Haiti and from which funds they
were paid? Neglecting the financial side of the question, the clear physical distinction
between Jolie/Penn/Jean and Haitians once again highlights the global inequality,
44
Haitian underdevelopment and signifies the need for intervention into nation’s
development.
In this sense, celebrities are representing themselves as ambassadors of the
“good” American life, trying to be inspirational for Haitians. From the three celebrities
analyzed in this paper, W. Jean serves as the best example of inspiration to develop in
accordance to American standards. On the pictures, his is usually pictured as “one of the
crowd”, yet always standing in the centre or above all others. He was born in Haiti,
emigrated to U.S., became rich and famous in “the country of equal opportunities” and
came back to help his former Haiti society – that is definitely making him to a role
model to follow. However, from the other side, his life model actually shows young
people the necessity to leave Haiti to find a better place for living. Hence, his visits to
the country are rather demoralising and lead to the conclusion of the overall misery in
Haiti, including the improbability of becoming wealthy one day.

Crowds, around celebrities, happy, thankful, and also uninterested:
6 from 9 pictures feature more than 10 Haitians standing around
celebrity, who is usually found alone in the central of the image (or also
with representatives of aid organizations in the background). Haitians
who pose for the camera are depicted with happy facial expressions,
others on the background seem uninterested (e.g. Image 6 for Sean
Penn).
Crowds of Haitians surrounding one or two celebrities signify the world
distribution of power: there is only 1% of rich, powerful and famous and much more
(99%) of others. However, Jolie, Penn and Jean are ready to share their financial and
time resources with Haitians, while no picture depicts any national leaders helping own
nation. Two possible meanings can be drawn from this fact. First, wider public is not
anymore interested in the actions of political figures, especially of a small state and thus
media does not cover many such topics, making within celebrities important
communicators of international development. Second, the lobbying power of celebrities
has become so powerful that they are able to implicitly communicate the Northern
ideology to Haiti so that as a result it will become depended on U.S. government. The
connection to the international politics is even featured on the Image 3, where Wyclef
Jean stands next to Bill Clinton, who helps a Haitian woman to load a heavy sack of
food on her head. Hence, the relationship between politics, entertainment and charity
45
should not be ignored. And by the way, it is interesting whether Bill Clinton visits Haiti
as a humanitarian or a politician with own interests.

Inferior positions of Haitians; mighty, organized, controlled
movements of celebrities, backed-up with strong lifeguard men: local
population is always shown around celebrities, who are brought to
epicentre of the picture (= epicenter of life). Although, the movement
cannot be traced on the image, it is possible to predict that celebrities
gesticulate in a very controlled way (Images 1, 2) or organize people
around them (Images 7, 8). On the half of the images, a lifeguard (or
several) standing close to celebrity can be traced (s. Images 1, 6, 7,8).
The presence of lifeguards enforces several debates. First of all, it is might be
arguable if celebrities are really welcomed by Haitians. If Jolie, Penn and Jean felt
absolutely safe among devastated and supposedly suffering people, they would not
probably need a lifeguard so close to them that even the media photographers have to
include one in every picture. Hence, celebrities are indeed scared of any act of violence
against them by Haitians. Secondly, it may signify the wildness and primitiveness of
local nation. The common Northern individual looking at the photographs of celebrities
in Haiti secured by lifeguards may assume that Haitians are either disdainful or too
primitive, and hence are not able to understand the good deeds of celebrities but
consider them to be invaders instead and may attack. Due to the reason of security from
unreasonable violence outbreak, the Northern society fully anticipates the presence of a
lifeguard (however, hardly someone thinks about the financial cost of having a special
24/7 lifeguard). Therefore, celebrities as new political actors, communicate the
necessity of North’s intervention into Haiti to make it the same “peaceful and beautiful”
place as the audience’s home society.
Moreover, representing Haitians as inferior and primitive, gives a playground
for celebrities and their charity organizations to blame Haitians in the lack of
coordination, sufficiency and knowledge, in case of “sudden” disappear of financial
resources, which were donated. “Where did the money go? […] It was easier to have the
Haitian government carry the blame, especially a president (Preval, auth.) whose
intransigence over the election was doing him no favors with Washington.” (Katz, 2013,
p. 207) The connection to U.S government leads to the further even more implicit
signifieds in pictures, such as dependency of Haiti on U.S, which is communicated
46
through American or Americanized (i.e. Wyclef Jean) celebrities in the Western (mainly
American mainstream media).

Set up, unrealistic (and untouched) food, post earthquake effects not
seen: most of the pictures seem to be staged up in order to produce a
meaningful and expected image of suffering Haitians for the Northern
media.
In order to spot the somewhat unrealistic settings of visual materials, take a
precise look at Image 2 (Wyclef Jean) and Image 5 (Angelina Jolie). Both celebrities
participate in a meal course, organized for children. However, no one touches the food
or drinks. On image 2 kids are fascinated by a speech of W. Jean (yet, what does he tell
to hungry 6-8 year olds to keep them concentrated on words and not on food?) On
image 5, fruits (vegetables?) look quite strange, even artificial. Moreover, there is
definitely less cutlery and food than kids gathered in the picture. Only Sean Penn looks
more or less natural on the pictures because he is mostly featured during his duties on
field as a humanitarian. Yet, notice that there are no kids around him. Hence, the
question arises, were kids gathered on purpose to take an impressive picture for the
Northern media article because a general reader waits to encounter celebrity in exactly
this way in Haiti?
Another suspicious picture featuring young Haitians is Image 4. On it A. Jolie
visits a boy in a tent with amputated leg, which he lost during the earthquake. Although,
she should proclaim sanitary practices, especially in case of children injuries, she does
not take off her shoes, while the boy is lying down in his underpants only. The boy is
very happy to see A. Jolie (though he doesn’t probably know her as a celebrity) as she
apparently “raises his spirit” (SOS Children's Village, 2010). His happiness is
highlighted in many texts featuring this image (s. next sub-chapter) with the message,
how strong and resilient Haitian kids are. In reality, however, taking in account his
young age the kid is probably happy to pose for cameras. But the semiotic message,
which is being sent by such images, is to show the world how miserable are the
conditions in Haiti, and in turn how superior are celebrities in their appearance. All
together that signifies the clear distinction between the North and the South.
47
As a result of semiotic analysis, a table with codes that was developed in
methodology part of this paper (s. Chapter 4.1.1) can be extended precisely to the case
Haiti. Table 3 presents the findings for each Dyer’s checkpoint:
Table 3: Signs and codes for case Haiti
Signs
Symbolization for case Haiti
Age
Poor and helpless victims with a lack of education in a contrast to educated
grown-up celebrities increases misery image of Haitians
Gender
Women are stereotypically considered weaker  images of suffering women
enforce more compassion.
Developed nations are stereotypically white. The contrast of Black (poor)
Haitians to developed (white) celebrities  highlights existence of racial
Race
discrimination
Body
Successful people are attractive and thus thin or sporty  celebrities are per se
physically attractive. Victims are either obese, anorexic or/and injured.
Celebrities are transmitting the image of beauty of clear skin, covered by skin
protection, perfumes, branded clothes etc, which all symbolize progress and
Looks
development.
Haitians are shown as victims, extremely sad without celebrities and
tremendously happy with humanitarians  shows dependence on the North.
Expression
Explanation for intervention.
Celebrities are powerful and hence keep direct eye contact with the Haitians,
who either answer with a thankful smile or shyly look away. Celebrities also
Eye contact
pose for camera and keep eye contact with the photographer.
The body language of celebrities shows self-confidence and justification for
their presence in Haiti. To show their superior social position but caring attitude
towards Haitians celebrities are bending over to offers, yet keep distance from
Pose
them  illustrating superiority
Celebrities with “caring hand”, or handing over donations (e.g. food, water),
large crowds of Haitians reaching over to aim or to celebrities themselves 
Touch
depicting dependency on the mighty North
Positional Celebrities are shown superior over Haitians because their richness and power
exceeds significantly that of local population. Celebrities are very low in
communicat
numbers in comparison to Haitians  all symbolizes inequality between rich
ion and poor.
The images of celebrities do-gooding in Haiti are mostly set to show ultimate
Settings happiness that humanitarians are bringing to undeveloped nation. The more
miserable the background of the image, the larger the readiness of the Northern
donors to help  exaggerates the distinction between the North and South.
Source: Self-created, adopted from Dyer (1982)
48
In summary, the results of the semiotic analysis of 9 selected pictures, gives
following three trends:

Celebrity is depicted as the central figure on all images and has superior
position over Haitian figures;

None of the pictures shows clearly the earthquake harm;

Feature of Haitian crowd (especially kids and women) is preferred.
These leads to two possible discourses: on the one side, it seems that the aim of
mediated images depicting Jolie, Penn and Jean in Haiti is to highlight the difference
between the North and the South through the Northern superiority. Moreover, it may be
used by government (e.g. U.S) to justify the peaceful deployment of military coups to
Haiti and huge spending of funds on it. The author of this paper fully agrees on this
topic with Katz (2013), who argues that
“[…] a major chunk of U.S. government spending went through the Defense
Department: $465 million through August 2010, mostly to the usual contractors
or for standard deployment expenses” (p. 204). “Huge logistical operations cost
money, especially when they involve nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and tens
of thousands personnel. But it’s misleading to call such spending “money for
Haiti”, especially when it gives the impression that any Haitian could have
misappropriated or even profited from it.” (p.205.)
Finally, none of the pictures shows earthquake harm actually, yet the viewer
unconsciously associates the celebrity as a post-quake helper with the characteristics of
humanity, charity, kindness and similar, which without doubt increases the value of a
celebrity as a brand.
5.2 Analysis of textual material
The semiotic analysis conducted in the previous sub-chapter shows how useful
is this method for understanding the rhetorical motive and how it becomes persuasive.
Combination with the text and discourse analysis will provide in this chapter some more
evidence for the research question, as well as make the answer to some degree less
subjective/biased. The discourse analysis does not aim to represent the opinion of the
author of this paper but to understand the real voice of powers that construct the regimes
of truth (Foucault, 1972).
In brief, the discourse analysis revealed three main discursive formations in
Haiti: dependency, differentiation and establishment of new international actors. In the
49
following, the analysis shows how different voices of discourse and power try “to make
themselves true” (Hall, 1997) through struggling between different “knowledge claims”
and convincing the other in their “different understanding of aspects of the world”
(Jorgensen & Philips, 2002).
The first discursive formation affirms Haitian dependency on U.S (mainly), as
well as other international organization. This dependency relates not only to
humanitarian aid, but also in existence of Haiti as “sovereign” state itself.
“Are we Haitians, once again, going to show ourselves incapable of carrying a
project to conclusion? Are we going to do this Haitian style – Wash our hands and dry
them in the dirt?” – Wyclef Jean rhetorically questions his own charity organization
Yele (T3). Here and in other sources, Haitians are frequently shown as incapable people
already so used to international aid that are Haiti is “known in developed world as “the
Republic of NGOs” (T1) and having no control over their own future. The question
arises, who has the power to control Haitian development? Through the analysis of
diverse sources, it may be concluded that powers that construct the regime of truth are
the ones, who have larger financial sources and who invest those gratuitous in Haiti.
The largest donor is non-surprisingly United States (s. Appendix B), who long
has own interests in Haiti. Through large spending and enormous donations, U.S
believes to establish “new and more efficient models for dispensing humanitarian aid”
(T1), yet also secure their presence in Haiti: “We will be here today, tomorrow and for
the time ahead” as Hillary Clinton promises (T1). Moreover, the Northern organizations
are not planning to give up quickly as “Every day, the UN, governments, NGOs and
local organizations are proving more people with protection […], yet the needs are still
enormous and the displacement could last a decade.” (T2) Not to forget that forms of
the Western supports includes not only celebrities taking pictures with victims for the
Northern popular media, but also deployment of military troops, sanitary and medical
workers, managers, photographers, drivers, guards, stylists, hairdressers and so on, on
whom an impressive percentage of funds are eventually spent. Thus, the money
fundraised by e.g. Wyclef Jean is eventually spent on his own needs (T3).
The new ways of “Build Back Better” (T1) by developed world is not a simple
form of traditional post-disaster aid, it aims “to restructure, in a sense, shattered
societies” by attracting foreign corporations and promote economic development by a
50
private sector, in other words by “New American Plan” (T1). This discursive formation
clearly shows that the idea of rebuilding Haiti is much more inherent than it seems from
the first side. With its “New American Plan” U.S charity organizations, both public and
private “exploit power” (T1) through trying to impose “American norms with no
practical regard for a Haitian context” (T1). The goal is hence to make the American
norms to an ideology, which explains to “poor Haitians” how things are need to be
understood and done (Rose, 2012). In order to make Haiti “a virtual, albeit
dysfunctional ward of the West” (T1), U.S even helps Haiti to elect a president with
“the kind of leadership that they need in the future” (T1), whereas the real “interest of
the U.S. in Haiti is to have a government that is complaint” (T1) to provoke Haitians to
ask for further support from States, increasing within its dependency knots. The result
of such policy is thus to rebuild a state, yet not for Haiti but rather for US as Haiti is
shown.
Nonetheless, what works in America will not necessary function in Haiti. This
may be a possible explanation why so many rebuilding projects have failed despite
“Haiti’s most hopeful hour for progress” (T1). As Reitman argues, “the idea of fixing
Haiti is a flawed concept, revealing not only the limits of Western humanitarianism but
the folly of believing that any country and its problems are ours to set right” (T1).
The second discursive formation shows difference between the Global North
and undeveloped Global South in role of Haiti. This discourse is directly related to the
discourse of international power forces and Haitian dependency on it because it serves
as a justification of intervention for the North. “Haiti has a resonating history of class
division, forced evictions and brutality” (T1) so Sean Penn explains why Haitians were
suspicious to listen to his advice to re-locate to the camp owned by “rich white people”
(T1). Thus Sean Penn affirms that racial background is still an important topic in Haiti,
which should not be the case in the developed nation.
In addition, through depicting Haitians as poor, undeveloped, corrupted,
irresponsible and having government that has “little interest in helping their own
country” (T1) it is easier to blame them in case of any failure because of their inability
to adapt to international (American) norms. “No one in the State Department or the
Haitian government seemed willing to take responsibility for the relocation – or even
for the rationale behind it” (T1). The reluctance to follow the regime of truth or
“stubbornly refusal to be fixed” without doubt disappoints the individuals standing
51
behind the ideology. That is why it is needed to illustrate Haitians as underdeveloped
and totally different from the North in order to explain to the wider Western public the
(current) inability to change the future of Haiti.
At the same time, Angelina Jolie is “struck by strength and spirit of the Haitian
people” (T2) and proposes “to give people the ability to work towards their own future
as it helps to restore their hope and respects their dignity” (T2). Yet, the work she
proposes is organized by the same power forces as described above as if “All roads lead
to Rome”.
Finally, the discourse analysis proves the establishment of celebrities as new
actors in the development discourse. Whether their presence in Haiti has a positive or a
negative discourse is yet unclear, but in any case all three celebrities studied in this
paper have left some remarkable contribution to Haitian development post-quake.
Angelina Jolie “was in Haiti to listen and learn” (T2) (and to sell pictures with her and
Haitian kids for impressive sums of dollars). Sean Penn’s J/P HRO’s engineering crew
had “re-established entire neighborhoods, many hundreds of additional job our
programs created” (T1) and etc and was favored by other development agencies for “his
ability to break through bureaucracy” despite being “a movie star”. Wyclef Jean has
fundraised $1 million in 24 hours over Twitter campaign (which have mystically
disappeared together with other $9 million funds on his personal expenditures) (T3).
Despite skepticism towards celebrities and their “profit-driven development
plans” (T1), their opinion is becoming ever sounder as it is believed that “private sector
is more likely to try something new or entrepreneurial” (T1). One of the celebrities even
managed to become a president of Haiti (although critics believe it is a part of the New
American Plan): “Martelly was a celebrity who used his star power to appeal to Haitians
across a wide political spectrum” (T1).
While celebrities blame each other for engaging in humanitarianism in scope of
own interests, as for example Sean Penn claims “My impression is that Yele is at the
service of Wyclef Jean and his reputation” (T3), the Global North believes in good
intentions of celebrities and continues to donate “support and dollars” (T1).
To conclude, this discourse analysis has confirmed the findings of semiotic
analysis and thus the visual and textual material are well contingent and depict
following trends:
52

Celebrities are depicted as part of the powerful elite, who enjoy beautiful
and wealthy lifestyle and in addition construct the regime of truth in
Haiti, in Foucaldian sense. Therefore, the celebritized humanitarianism is
institutionalized in mind-set in the modern international relations
thorough the means of the Western mainstream journalism. Haitians, on
the other side, are depicted as significantly weaker and dependent on
their celebrity donors.

Some media sources describe Haitians as nation with strong faith and
spirit, others at the same time as passive, corrupt and incapable to change
their future without international intervention, including celebritized
humanitarianism. Media tries to underline that due to their long-term
colonial and neocolonial relationships with U.S., Haitians expect it and
other donors to support the state.

Inequality between developed and developing nations is promoted by
media through asserting the Northern public to believe that Haitians
refuse to develop and rather follow outdated norms of living, while
celebrities are “desperately” trying to improve the misery of Haiti.
53
6. CONCLUSION
The aim of this paper was to prove the emergence of celebrities as new global
actors of development through depiction of their humanitarian efforts by the Western
media. Moreover, by a comparison of Haitians as victims of the Global South and three
celebrities as humanitarians of the Global North the art of communication for the
international development of celebritized aiders was studies. First of all, the proof of
importance of celebrity studies was explored by a literature review, which provided an
evidence of normalization of celebrity engagement within existing academic research.
Secondly, an empirical analysis in form of semiotic and discourse research methods
have confirmed the effects of media narratives of celebritized aid on development
framing in scope of the Western media consumer.
More precisely, literature findings have proved that modern humanitarianism is
fully reliable on celebrity engagement and can no longer trigger compassion towards
suffering nations/regions without celebrities. Philanthrocapitalism has become
normalized in the Northern mind-set and is favoured by the most Western audiences.
Therefore, possession of money, popularity or both gives celebrities a lobbying power
in international development and ability to communicate the problems of the South to
the global North. However, academics debate that celebrity aid promotes global
inequality and corrupt representation of the global Southern issues and their solutions.
Similarly opinion has the author of this paper by confirming her belief through the
empirical research.
First of all, the text and images of Haiti in mainstream media show enormous
diversity between U.S. celebrities of both genders and races and Haitian population,
which is depicted in accordance to modernization theory as weaker, significantly poorer
and more primitive. Although celebrities claim that they raise the spirit of suffering
Haitians and inspire them to rebuild their state, it seems that their field visits are indeed
more aspirational than inspirational because they act as ambassadors of good U.S.
American life pointing out to Haitians and to the rest of the world the misery of living in
Haiti. Having significant amount of power to construct and influence public opinion,
celebrities increase within the feeling of global inequality despite their do-gooding
motivation. Nonetheless, Foucault teaches us that the nature of power is never totally
evident to us, neither in scope of its location or in its mechanisms of involvement into
54
its strategies of knowledge construction. This leads to the idea that celebrities may be
important players in the global development, yet only represent the interests of some
other forces: political, societal or more narrowly journalistic, who decide how to depict
celebrities in public media to frame correct images of social reality.
As discussed in the analysis of this paper, the relationship between the celebrity,
media and global discursive powers remains somewhat vague. One is clear, celebrities
can be surely considered as new actors in the development. Both literature research and
empirical analysis in this paper have proved the normalization of celebrity engagement
in development issues. However, the scope of their actions, the roles they play or the
depiction of their engagement in Haiti is controlled by the demand of the Northern
media agents, who in turn act in the interests of their Western audiences. Despite the
freedom of speech in the most Northern societies, mainstream journalism is still
influenced by the ruling power elites and hence has to anticipate the image of celebrity
humanitarianism that current regime of truth is impelling to create. The debate who
nowadays exerts more power in this threefold relationship remains open and needs
further investigation. Therefore, the author of this paper suggests exploring the
correlation effects of power between political forces, celebrity actors and journalistic
creators as a further research.
As a final concluding note, it can be said that celebrity aid contributes to the
international development by increasing the awareness of mainly Northern audiences.
Nonetheless, the messages, which are being communicated through the mainstream
media do not foster the development of Haiti in a long-term and rather identify the
critical difference in North-South relations and inequality between nations, despite
being able to raise significant amount of financial resources needed for temporary
development of the country in immediate aftermath of disaster.
55
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59
APPENDIX
Appendix A: Haiti aid distribution in 2010 and 2011 by project type
60
Appendix B: 10 Main Haiti aid funders by country in 2010 and 2011
61
Appendix C: Texts for discourse analysis
T1: Sean Penn by Rolling Stone
T1: Sean Penn
Type: Abstracts from two digital (also published in print) magazine (Rolling Stone)
articles: 1) original article accusing Sean Penn in failure of providing aid, 2) response article,
written by Sean Penn accusing Rolling Stone in falsified information
Original article: Beyond relief: How the World Failed Haiti by Reitman, J, published
in Rolling Stone on August 4, 2011. Available
at:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-world-failed-haiti-20110804
Response article: Sean Penn responds to Rolling Stone’s Haiti story by Sean Penn,
published in Rolling Stone on September 30, 2011. Available at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/sean-penn-responds-to-rolling-stone-s-haiti-story20110930
A year and a half after the island was reduced to rubble by an earthquake, the
world's unprecedented effort to rebuild it has turned into a disaster of good intentions.
In March of last year, two months after the devastating earthquake that killed
300,000 Haitians and left more than a million homeless, Sean Penn was faced with a
monumental challenge. Penn, who had been spending most of his time in Haiti since the
quake, was running a large camp for internally displaced persons in the foothills of a
wealthy suburb of Port-au-Prince, on what had been the city's lone golf course. Nearly
60,000 poor and middle-class Haitians, most from Haiti's devastated capital, had
migrated here, pouring over the crumbled walls of the exclusive country club, and
established a spontaneous and overcrowded city of crude dwellings fashioned from
plastic sheeting.
One night, a heavy rainstorm reduced much of the golf course to mud. Penn
turned to Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, commander of the U.S. military's Joint Task Force Haiti, a
22,000-strong deployment, which was helping to lead the international relief effort.
Keen immediately assigned the Army Corps of Engineers to come up with a drainage
plan. Before the work could begin, however, some 5,000 refugees would have to leave
the golf course. The question was where to put them.
It fell to Penn to explain the situation to the Haitians. So he took his translator
and walked to the bottom of the golf course, where some of the refugees' leaders had
gathered. The men were suspicious of Penn, believing him to be in cahoots with Haiti's
wealthy landowners, a small and privileged elite who had ruled the country for
generations and were now trying to forcibly evict many refugees from their land, often
at the point of a gun. To the people living in Penn's camp, the "optional relocation" he
was proposing smacked of a prelude to a larger, mandatory exodus.
"Look," said the actor, sitting down with the Haitians in a tent. "I don't give a
fuck about the rich guys who own this club."
62
In context of reality and of the broader explanation I gave Ms. Reitman and her
fact checker, I explained that I had indeed said those words knowing I was speaking to
a group of pro-Aristide, anti-foreign “community leaders” whom, I had been informed
in advance, believed that any whites operating in the camp within which they lived were
doing so on behalf of the “rich white people who own the club,” which in Haiti has a
resonating history of class division, forced evictions and brutality. I used those words
about the landowners only in knowing I would need to court open minds, and had to
make the separation clear between their assumptions about these landowners (which,
had they been justified, indeed my words would have expressed exactly the position I
and J/P HRO would have taken) and our own position as a humanitarian operation,
presenting them with an opportunity to make a sacrifice for the greater good of the
community.
He didn't even want them to leave, he said, but what was the choice? He pulled
out a map of the drainage plan the military engineers had devised. Those ditches were a
necessity, he said — without them, thousands of people might die in a mudslide or
flood. Then he took out a Google Earth photo of Corail, a wide swath of land, some
18,000 acres, and laid out the proposal: Each family that agreed to move to Corail
would get $50, courtesy of the American Red Cross, and a hygiene kit. They would also
get shelter, food rations, clean water, free medical care and a school for their kids. And
they would be first in line for jobs in Korean-owned garment factories that the Haitian
government pledged would soon be built in the area.
"That's the plan," Penn said. "We'll step outside, you guys decide. If it were me,
I would take my kids out there rather than stay here."
Within days, thousands of refugees had agreed to move to Corail. On Saturday,
April 10th, 2010, the first group left the golf course in a caravan of buses, the exodus
chaperoned by United Nations peacekeepers. They arrived, disembarking onto a dusty,
cactus-strewn patch of land in the shadow of a denuded mountain that turned out to be
as vulnerable to the elements as the golf course. Their new homes — bright white tents
set up on the baking gravel — were both hot and flimsy; three months after the refugees
arrived, hundreds of the tents would blow away in a heavy windstorm.
What those not in the field do not know is that 100 or more tents go down in
EVERY camp with EVERY harsh rain. But rains in Haiti tend to fall at night, when
fearful journalists dare not tread into “spooky” IDP camps, and too many U.N.
bureaucrats have never seen the inside of a camp to begin with.
There were no schools, no markets, and the closest hospital was miles away.
There were also no jobs, as the hoped-for factories would not be built for months — or
even years. To return to the city meant a long walk to a bus stop followed by a severalhour commute. They were marooned.
In the aftermath of the move, no one in the State Department or the Haitian
government seemed willing to take responsibility for the relocation — or even for the
rationale behind it. "I've yet to see any evidence that proves that anyone was in more
danger on the golf course than they would have been anywhere else — though
everybody in Haiti thinks they were," says a senior U.N. official who asked not to be
identified. "What the move proved was that it's possible to 'save' 5,000 people if you say
they're in a dangerous situation and put them in what you call a safe situation. It was the
most grotesque act of cynicism that I've seen for some time."
63
Penn, for one, admits that Corail was a problematic choice. "It's a very
vulnerable area," he says, adding that he realized this immediately, having toured the
site soon after it was selected. "It struck me as desolate, but we had an emergency, and
this was an emergency-relocation area — I never said it was anything else," he insists.
"I feel like shit. I hope those guys are OK when it rains out there. I feel an extra
responsibility — of course I do. But we were betrayed." Penn says he was assured by
international monitors and aid agencies that Corail was a safe place to live, and that
shelters would be built within three months.
(From the response article) For our own part, J/P HRO’s engineering crew had
re-established entire neighborhoods, removing over 120,000 cubic meters of rubble and
demolishing hundreds of irreparable buildings, much of that rubble recycled and
trucked into the slum of Cité Soleil to be used as fill beneath three new schools in
assistance to the Digicel school project (mentioned in the Rolling Stone article). Our
medical teams and clinics had treated over 115,000 patients, and pushed by truck and
helicopter over 100 metric tons of cholera meds throughout the country, including
mountainous regions so remote that inhabitants had never seen a white face before. Our
school of 260 children was advancing, and we had ultimately helped to relocate over
30,000 people from camps to homes while coordinating camp services as management
in that same period. We have trained and employed 250 Haitians on staff, as well as
many hundreds of additional jobs our programs created, both through cash-for-work
and cash-for-production programs. All of this principally funded by private donors.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake
on January 12th, 2010, the international community resolved not only to rebuild Haiti,
but also to establish new and more efficient models for dispensing humanitarian aid.
President Obama, calling the tragedy "cruel and incomprehensible," pledged "every
element of our national capacity" to the response. Former Presidents George W. Bush
and Bill Clinton created a special fund for Haiti; the American Red Cross launched a
wildly successful appeal, raising close to $500 million in one year. In total, an estimated
one in two American households donated more than $1.4 billion to Haiti relief, with
close to $11 billion more for reconstruction pledged by donor countries and financial
institutions. "We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead," Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton promised during a post-quake visit to Port-au-Prince.
American and international officials gave their plan for Haiti a simple and
compelling name: Building Back Better, a term that came into vogue after the tsunami
that struck Asia in 2004, and that has since become something of a mantra in the
development world. In a radical shift away from traditional approaches to foreign aid,
"building back better" attempts to go beyond simple relief and not only to rebuild
shattered structures, but to restructure, in a sense, shattered societies. At the forefront of
this effort is private-sector investment being leveraged to build the kind of infrastructure
needed to promote economic development and attract foreign corporations: roads,
power lines, factories, markets. "The hope," explains Matthew Bishop, co-author
of Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World , "is that using
the private sector will be a lot more efficient. Traditional aid has been extremely
wasteful. When it is allowed to take the lead, the private sector is more likely to try
something new or entrepreneurial."
But despite all that has been promised, almost nothing has been built back in
Haiti, better or otherwise. Within Port-au-Prince, some 3 million people languish in
permanent misery, subject to myriad experiments at "fixing" a nation that, to those who
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are attempting it, stubbornly refuses to be fixed. Mountains of rubble remain in the
streets, hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in weather-beaten tents, and
cholera, a disease that hadn't been seen in Haiti for 60 years, has swept over the land,
infecting more than a quarter million people.
This distillation of snowballed half-truths perilously threatens to dissuade
donorship while bolstering reluctance and excusability on the parts of governments and
NGOs alike to release already appropriated funds at this, Haiti’s most hopeful hour for
progress since the earth shook.
As the relief effort has dragged on for well over a year, virtually every actor
involved has blamed the others: […] Others say the goals were too lofty, the plans
unrealistic; maybe Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, was simply
too damaged to be fixed. Or perhaps the very idea of fixing Haiti at all is a flawed
concept, revealing not only the limits of Western humanitarianism but the folly of
believing that any country and its problems are ours to set right. Amid all the fingerpointing, however, nearly everyone taking part in the relief effort is quick to place at
least some of the blame on the Haitians themselves. "Corruption is the reason those
reconstruction funds haven't broken loose," says one U.S. business consultant, who
describes most Haitian politicians as "pathological narcissists" with little interest in
helping their own country. Such accusations have been made by outsiders for as long as
outsiders have tried to help Haiti — which itself may be the biggest problem. "Haitian
people have always found a way to get rid of those who've tried to control them," says
Raoul Peck, Haiti's former minister of culture. "It's very easy to point at the Haitians for
being corrupt or weak. What's much harder is looking at what's wrong with those who
say they are just trying to help."
Haiti's dysfunction, while undeniably exacerbated by the quake, goes back
generations. The first independent black republic in the world, it has been hobbled for
most of the past century by a series of repressive dictatorships and military regimes, and
so dependent on Western aid groups that since the late 1990s, it has been known
throughout the development world as "the Republic of NGOs." The earthquake didn't so
much destroy Haitian society as it exposed how deeply broken that society already was.
Because international NGOs get most of their money from large government
agencies, they are beholden to the broader policy imperatives of their funders. "The big
problem is that most NGOs are only really accountable to their donors, when we should
really be accountable to the people we're trying to serve," says Dr. Louise Ivers, senior
health and policy adviser for Partners in Health, a Boston-based NGO that has worked
in Haiti for 25 years. Some organizations, she notes, "exist only to write grant proposals
that respond to specific donor requests. If your mandate is just to follow the money,
then the money determines what happens."
For too long, Clinton believed, the West had embraced "development for
development's sake," throwing money at poor countries without demanding either
accountability or results. Haiti had received so much foreign assistance over the years
— more than $300 million annually from the U.S. alone — that it had become a virtual,
albeit dysfunctional, ward of the West, and a poster child for the inadequacies of foreign
aid.
Penn himself, by most accounts, has been one of the most effective players in
Haiti. Some celebrities who threw themselves into the relief effort, like Wyclef Jean,
quickly discovered that even the best-intentioned efforts to mobilize resources can go
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disastrously wrong, undermined by mismanagement and corruption. But Penn, who
arrived in Haiti a week after the earthquake with a team of doctors and rescue workers
he had rounded up, forged a bond with both the U.S. military and with Dr. Paul Farmer,
the well-known advocate for Haiti's poor. At first, many veteran relief workers were
wary of Penn. "For all the usual reasons, I was skeptical of a movie star working in
Haiti," admits Ivers, the senior health and policy adviser for Farmer's organization. "I
doubted his motivation, and I was frustrated that I couldn't do what he was able to do."
But Penn soon impressed Ivers and others with his ability to break through bureaucracy,
and humanitarian officials now refer to his golf-course settlement, with its hospital,
school, well-maintained water and sanitation, as a "five-star camp."
As such, the Iron Market, an ode to commerce and entrepreneurial drive, is also a
pointed symbol of the disproportionate influence that foreign corporations wield over
the future of Haiti. Under what might be called the "New American Plan,"
reconstruction is driven not primarily by the dictates of democracy but by the demands
of the bottom line. "Ultimately it all comes down to governance," says Bishop, the coauthor of Philanthrocapitalism. "There was this tremendous outpouring of goodwill
after the earthquake, and this idea of 'build back better' caught on — but for all their
consultations, no one really found out what the Haitian people's concept of build back
better actually was."
The man who was actually elected president in April — the 50-year-old singer
Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly — also offers an indication of how little control
Haitians are likely to have over their own future. The United States, along with Canada
and the European Union, invested roughly $29 million in the elections, pushing for a
recount when Martelly, viewed by many as the people's choice, was edged out by a
rival, government-backed candidate in the first round. The recount was needed, Cheryl
Mills explained at the time, to ensure that the people of Haiti got "the kind of leadership
that they need in the future." Martelly also received robust support from Digicel and
other private-sector interests.
A political novice sometimes described as the Ronald Reagan of Haitian
politics, Martelly was an unorthodox if telling candidate to lead the new Haiti. An
imposing man with a striking bald head, he was a celebrity who used his star power to
appeal to Haitians across a wide political spectrum. Martelly made his name singing
kompa, an Afro-Caribbean genre beloved throughout the country. For years, he'd been
one of the most popular entertainers in Haiti. Martelly also positioned himself as a
friend to U.S. business interests, which won him support from right-wing think tanks
like the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The interest of the U.S. in Haiti
is to have a government that is compliant. They pushed for Martelly, and now they are
expecting him to do their bidding — and he is."
The cumulative cynicism of Reitman’s article dismisses Martelly as a right-wing
militarist in the pocket of the private sector and the United States government. It is an
assertion entrenched in the lust for endless struggle and the imposition of American
norms with no practical regard for a Haitian context. And his call for a new Haitian
military should be understood in the balance of a country currently under effective
security occupation by the foreign faces, helmets, weapons and APCs of United Nations
peacekeepers. (Despite the exceptional work by many of these peacekeepers and their
leadership, there are always those who exploit power.
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This, then, is the legacy that decades of foreign investment have bestowed on
Haiti: a brutal and intractable poverty, borne of a disastrous mix of well-intentioned aid
and profit-driven development. Every decade or so, it seems, the world comes up with a
bold new plan for saving Haiti — and each ultimately proves as ineffective and fleeting
as the last.
Where to begin? In the areas of operation where J/P HRO have ongoing
programs, I am known to the population not as a film actor, not as a warm and fuzzy
humanitarian, but as a blan (that foreign guy who’s the boss of the organization
working with them in their camps and their neighborhoods). I am also known, to those I
am known, as a potential employer.In Haiti, what is wanted is a job.
Suspicion and cynicism toward U.S. policy in Haiti have shameful historic
validity, but it is a new day. It is time for the Haitian people and their new president to
have their voices heard and their needs met. So much white noise of corruption, both
real and imagined, so much suspicion, and conspiracy. Well, 9 million human beings
live in Haiti. They need our support. Rolling Stone readers and Rolling Stone magazine,
they need your support and dollars.
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T2: Angelina Jolie by UNHCR
T2: Angelina Jolie
Type: Digital article from the official webpage the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)
Original article: UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie meets Haitian quake
survivors, written by UNHCR (no individual author available), published on February 10, 2010
at http://www.unhcr.org/4b7280139.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, February 9 (UNHCR) – UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina
Jolie arrived on Tuesday in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, where she visited
earthquake survivors and met aid workers from local and international organizations.
Jolie, who said she was in Haiti to "listen and to learn," visited medical centres, the
UN mission and met with vulnerable children. On her arrival in the Haitian capital,
Jolie was briefed by the United Nations Acting Special Representative of the
Secretary-General Edmond Mulet on the scale of the humanitarian operation to date
and the challenges that remain.
She also visited a cash-for-work programme run by the UN Development Programme
(UNDP) in the Carrefour district of Port-au-Prince, which is enabling Haitians to earn
an income as they help their country to recover. "To give people the ability to work
towards their own future is so important at this time. It helps to restore their hope
and respects their dignity," said Jolie. The programme is assisting some 40,000
people with an aim of reaching more than 400,000. She commended the participants
who told her they were happy to clean up their country and then sang her a song
about Haitian pride.
In the Santo area of Port-au-Prince, Jolie visited SOS Children's Villages, a worldwide
programme to raise children inside their own countries. Since the earthquake, the
organization has begun providing additional care for children who have been newly
orphaned or who have lost contact with their parents as a result of the catastrophe.
SOS is working to reunite children with their family members and will continue to
care for those without any caregivers. Jolie applauded their work, while stressing
that "new adoptions should definitely not be encouraged as an immediate response to
the emergency. Haiti had many trafficking problems before the earthquake and now
must keep a very close watch on the children. I would encourage as much support as
possible to groups like SOS and UNICEF providing care for children in country."
The acclaimed actress also visited a tented hospital set up and run by UNHCR
partner, Médecins Sans Frontières, in the commune of Delmas, also in Port-au-Prince.
"I was struck by the strength and spirit of the Haitian people. Children as young as
nine months old were coping with amputations with extraordinary resilience. I even
met a little 10-year-old boy who had recently had his leg amputated, who was
giggling to himself about a silly book as he sat on the floor," Jolie revealed. "These
doctors are extraordinary," she said. "For all the patients that had to have
amputations there are also a high number of limbs and lives that the doctors have
managed to save."
"It will take years to rebuild Haiti," Jolie said, after seeing the devastation from the
January 12 earthquake. "Every day, the UN, governments, NGOs and local
organizations are providing more people with protection, food, water, shelter and
health care, yet the needs are still enormous and the displacement could last a
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decade."Providing adequate shelter to the displaced is of paramount importance,
especially as the upcoming rainy season threatens to add to the devastation.
Everyone is bracing themselves for a second wave of tragedy."
Before arriving in Haiti, Jolie spent a day in the Dominican Republic, where she
visited Haitian earthquake victims in the local public hospital and in nearby shelters.
"I was heartened to see the care being provided by Dominican doctors and nurses and
to witness the generosity of local society, which is caring for discharged patients and
their families in their recovery," she said.
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T3: Wyclef Jean by New York Times
T3: Wyclef Jean
Type: Abstracts from digital newspaper (New York Times) article
Original article: In Haiti, Little Can Be Found of Hip Hop Artist’s Charity, written by
Deborah Sonntag, published on October 11, 2012 at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world/americas/quake-hit-haiti-gains-little-as-wyclef-jeancharity-spendsmuch.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FJean%2C%20Wyclef&action=click&contentColl
ection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4
&pgtype=collection
PORTAUPRINCE, Haiti — In a new memoir, Wyclef Jean, the Haitian born hip
hop celebrity, claims he endured a “crucifixion” after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake
when he faced questions about his charity’s financial record and ability to handle what
eventually amounted to $16 million in donations. Portraying himself as persecuted like
Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Jean, 42, writes with indignation about
insinuations that he had used his charity, Yéle, for personal gain. He says he did not
need to — “I have a watch collection worth $500,000” — and that doubters will
someday understand “Yéle is Haiti’s greatest asset and ally.” But on his book tour for
“Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story,” Mr. Jean, who made an aborted bid for the
presidency of Haiti after the earthquake, neglects to mention two key facts: a continuing
New York attorney general’s investigation has already found financial improprieties at
Yéle, and the charity effectively went out of business last month, leaving a trail of
debts, unfinished projects and broken promises. “If I had depended on Yéle,” said
Diaoly Estimé, whose orphanage features a wall painting of Mr. Jean and his wife,
“these kids would all be dead by now.”
Even as Yéle is besieged by angry creditors, an examination of the charity indicates that
millions in donations for earthquake victims went to its own offices, salaries,
consultants’ fees and travel, to Mr. Jean’s brother-in-law for projects never realized, to
materials for temporary houses never built and to accountants dealing with its legal
troubles. On the ground in Haiti, little lasting trace of Yéle’s presence can be discerned.
The walled country estate leased for its headquarters, on which the charity lavished
$600,000, is deserted. Yéle’s street cleaning crews have been disbanded. The Yéle
branded tents and tarps have mostly disintegrated; one camp leader said they had not
seen Yéle, which is based in New York, since Mr. Jean was disqualified as a
presidential candidate because he lives in Saddle River, N.J., not Haiti.
This summer, the charity foundered. At the end of August, Derek Q. Johnson, Yéle’s
chief executive, announced his resignation to supporters.
Mr. Jean founded Yéle, a word he coined to mean “cry for freedom,” in 2004. Now 40,
he had emigrated to the United States as a child, becoming an international star with his
1990s band, the Fugees. In his memoir, he says his journey from “a hut with a dirt
floor” to “a mansion in New Jersey with Grammys on the mantle” motivated him to
give back to his homeland. But from the start Yéle was lax about accounting and tax
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filing, blurring the boundaries between its founders’ personal and charitable enterprises.
The forensic audit examined $3 million of the charity’s 2005 to 2009 expenses and
found $256,580 in illegitimate benefits to Mr. Jean and other Yéle board and staff
members as well as improper or potentially improper transactions. These included
$24,000 for Mr. Jean’s chauffeur services and $30,763 for a private jet that transported
Lindsay Lohan from New Jersey to a benefit in Chicago that raised only $66,000. The
audit considered it appropriate, though, for the charity to pay Mr. Jean $100,000 to
perform at a Yéle fundraiser in Monaco because that was his market rate. It also found it
acceptable for Yéle to spend $125,114 on travel and other matters related to a “60
Minutes” report on “Wyclef’s mission to help the people of Haiti and his personal
success story” because it appeared to have heightened awareness of Yéle. It was deemed
legitimate to have spent $57,927 on private jets to fly Matt Damon and others to Haiti
because they gave “substantial contributions” afterward.
Yéle was small before the earthquake, with only $37,000 in assets. Immediately
afterward, money started pouring in. Mr. Jean said he raised $1 million in 24 hours
when he urged his Twitter followers to text donations. In 2010, Yéle spent $9 million
and half went to travel, to salaries and consultants’ fees and to expenses related to their
offices and warehouse. In contrast, another celebrity charity, Sean Penn’s J/P Haitian
Relief Organization, spent $13 million with only 10 percent going to those costs.
Though Mr. Penn’s group spent $43,000 on office related expenses, Yéle spent $1.4
million, including $375,000 for “landscaping” and $37,000 for rent to Mr. Jean’s
Manhattan recording studio. Yéle spent $470,440 on its own food and beverages. Some
of Yéle’s programming money went to projects that never came to fruition: temporary
homes for which it prepaid $93,000; a medical center to have been housed in geodesic
domes for which it paid $146,000; the revitalization of a plaza in the Cité Soleil slum,
where supposed improvements that cost $230,000 are nowhere to be seen.
And a Miami company called Amisphere Farm Labor, incorporated in 2008 and
dissolved in 2009, received $1 million in 2010 to provide hot meals to displaced
Haitians. Yet a Haitian caterer has sued Yéle for $430,000 in non-payment for these
very same meals, thus far succeeding only in getting the charity’s Haitian bank account
frozen. Mr. Penn told The New York Times in 2010, “My impression is that Yéle is at
the service of Wyclef Jean and his reputation.”
Derek Q. Johnson, then the chief executive of Yéle, was skeptical of the program and
cancelled it. The Rev. Jean, in protest, sent an angry email to Yéle: “Are we Haitians,
once again, going to show ourselves incapable of carrying a project to conclusion?” he
asked. “Are we going to do this Haitian style — ‘Wash our hands and dry them in the
dirt?’ ”
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